Resident Hellsing
by Keith B. Real
Summary: Seras is sent to Raccoon City to investigate Umbrella. Her timing couldn't be worse.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One.**

If it wasn't for the zombies, Seras would have liked Raccoon City. It was everything an isolated American mountain town should be and then some. She had expected a town so far from civilization to be tiny and boring, but the place had proven to be worthy of being called a city. It was perfect, just like the brochures said; except for the damned zombies.

Seras was standing in her hotel room, looking out at the night sky, the horizon aglow with the orange light from the scattered fires that had sprung up across the city. Through the window, she could hear the hungry moans and screams of the undead that had infested the streets.

She thought back to a few days ago when she had been briefed by Sir Integra on her first mission to the United States. "Typically, the United States is considered to be well outside of our jurisdiction," Integra had said while pulling one of those smelly cigars out of her pocket and lighting it. "But the company we're sending you off to investigate has its headquarters here in Europe. We feel that whatever they're planning over there might become an issue for us over here, and we'd like to know more about it."

Seras had squirmed in her chair a little at the thought of traveling to America. The last time she had left England, she had been turned into a pin cushion by a Catholic priest. "What do we think they might be doing?" Seras had asked.

"All we know is that it involves undead. I've received a report of a police SWAT team encountering them in some mansion in the hills just outside of this…Raccoon City. The story the survivors are telling is quite interesting, although no one believes them."

Seras blinked, a puzzled expression moved over her face. "America doesn't have anything like Hellsing to counter stuff like that?"

"If they do, I haven't heard of it," Integra said, inhaling on her cigar and letting the smoke drift out her nostrils. "Either way, you'll be going there to investigate what happened. Find out what else the remaining S.T.A.R.S members know about this Umbrella corporation, and then report back here. Walter has further details on how you'll be traveling and how you will be getting back."

Walter had booked her a flight and arranged for a hotel room, scheduling it so Seras wouldn't have to be out in the daylight. The sun bothered her immensely, and what was worse, she couldn't fly over with any of her weapons. "If you need a gun, buy one in a gun store. They sell them like shoes in America," Walter had said.

That hadn't been exactly true. Seras had tried to buy a gun in one of Raccoon City's gun shops, but had encountered a ten day waiting period. She hadn't been in the city a week when the zombies first appeared.

Seras had been trying to find someone named Jill Valentine when she first heard it on the news. A house had been broken into and the occupants eaten. It appeared to be the work of about ten people. Talk of cannibal cults had been all over the place, along with a few scattered muttering of what the S.T.A.R.S members had been talking about a few months prior.

The stories about houses being broken into and people being eaten (All familiar territory for Seras) quickly gave way to reports of violent crimes happening all over the city. There was also some strange disease, much like rabies, causing people to become violent and show signs of leprosy. Those stories gave way to reports of bizarre creatures being sighted in the woods, and near the edges of town.

Surprisingly little action was taken by the authorities. People chalked up the bizarre reports to small-town mania. Sure, there was some bad stuff happening, but the bored hicks in the area were making much more of it than it really was. Seras, on the other hand, knew different. Aside from knowing the S.T.A.R.S account to be accurate, something in her blood could sense the impeding carnage and mayhem. She could practically smell the coming blood storm on the wind, and she didn't like it.

Seras ran her hands through her hair and looked out on the dying city. She let a breath out with a loud _whoosh _and shook her head. "What a disaster," she whispered. "All those people."

She had seen more than a few zombie massacres since becoming a cop, but this one took the cake. The entire city, thousands of people, all dead or food for the dead. Plus there were the mutants she had heard about, but never seen, lurking out there somewhere.

First thing was first. She needed to contact Hellsing headquarters and make a report. The phones in the hotel were dead, and the cheap cell phone she had brought couldn't raise any bars. "I can handle this. I've been in worse situations," she said to herself. _And only one of them actually killed me_.

She found her suitcase by the TV, threw it on the bed and opened it. Inside were the two Hellsing uniforms she had packed; one blue, the other yellow. She pondered them for a moment and decided that this was definitely a blue situation. Quickly, she stripped down to her skivvies and put on the blue uniform. Why thigh-high black stockings and a short skirt passed for a military uniform in Hellsing, she had never bothered to ask.

Everyone had evacuated the hotel, even the staff. A maid had knocked on her door several hours ago, telling her that if she was inside she had better leave while she could. Seras made her way to the end of the hall where there was an emergency fire exit. The silence in the empty halls was a little more than eerie, but it was preferable to the sounds she heard when she made her way up to the hotel's roof; an easy feat for her once she was out on the fire escape.

The wails of the undead carried on the flame-lit night air made Seras think that this was what hell must look like. She could hear sirens off in the distance, along with the scattered screams of still-living residents of Raccoon City.

She tried the cell phone again, sure she would get at least a weak signal. Again, she got nothing. "Bloody hell," she muttered. "Why can't I get a signal?"

She put the phone back in her pocket and tried to remember where the gun shop had been. She had walked there a few days ago, so it couldn't have been too far. _Even a short walk is going to be risky,_ she thought. _I've got to do it though. I need a weapon, and I need to contact Sir Integra._

She leapt off the roof and down onto the fire escape. The street bellow looked abandoned, but that didn't mean it was safe. She wasn't too worried about running into small amounts of undead, she had fought ghouls hand-to-hand before, but these zombies seemed different than ghouls. They weren't created by a vampire, they seemed to be the result of some kind of virus. Seras had no idea how such a thing might affect her, and she had no desire to learn the hard way.

**To be continued…**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two.**

The street with the gun shop was a mess. At the far end was a towering inferno, caused by an overturned gas truck. The thing had crashed into another car, overturned it, and had then plowed into a building blocking off the street. The rest of the street was littered with broken glass from cars and storefront windows that had been broken. It seemed that every ten feet, there was a wrecked car. More than a few had blood trickling down the broken shards of glass.

Seras was doing her best to be sneaky, but the zombies had a way of noticing everything that looked remotely like a living human. There were about twenty-five of them milling around the street looking for a meal. When one saw Seras it extended its arms and came wobbling after her, moaning as it went. Soon, all of the zombies had caught sight of her, and were headed her way.

She stepped out from behind a van that had driven up onto the sidewalk and made her way towards the advancing mob. She gave the first one, a tall man wearing blue jeans and a bloody black shirt, a stiff punch to the jaw. The force of the blow snapped its head back and sent him sprawling on his back, where he wasted no time in trying to get to his feet again.

The next one, a fat man with a pale drooping face and a ruined eye socket, received a hard kick to his gut, knocking him backward into another smaller zombie. Both went down, and Seras kept walking towards the gun store.

She stopped walking and began to run, not wanting to have to clobber anymore than she had to. She didn't like touching the nasty things and was afraid she might succumb to her bloodlust if she got too carried away with fighting them.

Surprisingly, the gun shop door was unlocked. Seras walked in, hearing the _ding_ of the bell that would alert the store owner when someone came in. It was dark inside the gun shop, but Seras easily saw the man across the counter as he shouted "Freeze, don't move!"

The portly man had short black hair, a wounded arm, and was pointing what looked to be a crossbow at her. "Don't shoot," she said, calmly. "I'm not a zombie."

The man lowered the crossbow and came walking around the counter towards her. "Sorry," he said. "Can't blame me for being jumpy."

Seras moved out of his way as he locked the front door. "Are you okay?" she asked, looking down at his forearm which was covered in a bloody bandage.

The man looked at his arm, took a good, long look at Seras, and nodded. "Don't worry about me girly, just a bite. Those people are crazy."

Seras nodded. "Bunch of nutters, I'll say." She turned from the man to inspect the gun shop. She was disappointed to see that the rows and rows of weapons she had seen a few days ago were now gone. "Where are all your guns?" she asked.

The man snorted angrily. "Damned looters. Can't say as I really blame them, but when this is all over a man's still gotta make a living." He wiped his nose as Seras turned back towards him. She could tell he had been checking out her backside. "You're not from around here, are you?" he said.

She shook her head. "No. I'm from England, on vacation. This is a nice place to visit and all, but I wouldn't want to live here."

The man laughed loudly. "Yeah, I hear that," he said. Seras smiled back, glad she could joke at a time like this. Her smile faded when she caught movement behind the glass window the man was standing in front of.

"Lookout!" she shouted, as the forms of eight zombies came bursting in through the window, sending shards of glass all over the floor. The man turned and tried to fire his crossbow, but he was too late. He fell to the ground along with the gang of zombies. Before Seras could rush in and kick one off of him they had already chewed a gaping hole in his neck.

The stench of fresh blood as it came gushing out the man's throat made Seras' mouth water. She wanted to join the zombies in eating him, and the thought of that made her angry. She began kicking at them like they were dogs, cracking their skulls and breaking their necks with each powerful blow from her foot.

When they were off him, she knelt down to see how bad it was. She knew he was dead, but thought she should check anyway. She picked up the small, black, crossbow he had been wielding and looked it over. It had one bolt already notched, and about a dozen more slotted in a holder along the stock. Seras had never been trained in such a weapon, but thought it might come in handy anyway.

The sound of a hungry moan made her pick her gaze up from the pool of warm blood spreading out on the floor. More zombies were coming over to see what all the fuss was about. There were too many to shoot, and pummeling them would be just a waste of time. She needed to find a firearm and someway to communicate with Sir Integra.

Not happy about leaving the man's corpse to be eaten, she made her way to the back of the store and through a door that led into a back alley. She could hear them munching away on the man's body as she headed down the alleyway. _Those Umbrella people are going to pay for this,_ she thought. _When I make my report, I'm not going to envy those blokes in Europe when my Master gets sent after them._

**To be continued…**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

Seras ducked behind a trash can when she saw a zombie wearing fatigue pants and a yellow vest. She had made her way down the back alleys of Raccoon City, running past zombies, punching and shoving them when they got too close.

The zombie was standing at the foot of a set of stone steps, wobbling back and forth. Seras knew that up the steps was the entrance to the Raccoon City Police Department building. It had been the first place she had checked in her search for Jill Valentine.

Taking the zombie out would be easy, but she didn't know what was up the stairs. If it was only a few zombies, she would be fine, but there was no way of knowing for sure; it very well could be dozens.

Seras decided to see if she was a good shot with her new crossbow. She held it tight to her shoulder, pointed it at the zombie over the top of the trash can, and aimed as though she had a third eye in the center of her forehead, just like her master Alucard had taught her.

The bolt flew from the crossbow with a _thwip_ and landed in the back of the zombie's skull, sinking in up to its fletching. He fell forward with a splat, and Seras waited to see if more zombies would come piling down the steps to investigate the noise.

When she was sure the coast was clear, she notched another bolt and rushed over to the zombie. There was something about his appearance that made her want to look him over. She pulled the bolt out of its skull and stuck in her belt, then she flipped the body on its back to take a look at the man's face.

It was Brad Vickers; she recognized him from the file photos Walter had given her to study. His face was purple and bloated and a nasty bite wound was on his neck. There was a large splotch of blood around his mouth that had dribbled down onto his yellow vest.

Seras searched through his pockets and found his wallet along with an ornate key. The wallet had a few dollars in it and an ID card that confirmed that it was indeed the body of Brad Vickers that lie at her feet. The key was long, gold, and had a blue stone set in the handle. Seras examined it and decided to put it in her pocket.

She made her way quickly up the stone steps and past a granite planter where small hedges and green herbs were growing. She stopped for a moment in the small courtyard leading up to the R.P.D.'s front door. Across the courtyard, past a gate were about a dozen zombies wearing police uniforms. When they saw her, they raised their arms, moaned, and stumbled forward.

Seras turned from them and opened the large wooden double doors to the police station. She was ready to run right back outside and fight the small group of zombies outside, just in case the police station's main room was swarming with them.

Inside it was completely clear, much to Seras' relief; she was growing weary of sneaking around flaming alleyways and barricades fighting off ravenous zombies. The constant noise had been getting on her nerves too. Sirens, screams, and zombie wails had permeated the night air making the silence of the police station was a welcome change.

Dominating the center of the large room was an enormous statue of a woman carrying a water pitcher. Beyond it, was the receptionist's desk, where she had asked about Jill Valentine a few days earlier. Off to her left were two doors; to her right was another door. Seras tried the door to her right, but found that it was locked. She went down the steps onto the main floor, and tried the double set of doors to her right which were locked as well.

She walked over to the next door, deciding that she would have to begin breaking doors down if this one didn't open. Fortunately, it opened into what Seras thought might be a break room. It was hard to tell with the corpses of police officers lying on the floor.

A long wooden table dominated the center of the room. It was filthy with scattered papers, used bandages and paper party hats. _Looks like the party got crashed,_ Seras thought. A low moan emanated from the office at the other end of the room. Seras raised her crossbow and walked around the table so that it would be between her and the zombie.

When she could see into the office, she found that the moan was coming from a dying police officer. The man looked up, his face wide with fear. He raised his gun and clumsily pointed it at Seras. "Don't shoot, I'm a human!" she shouted, before he could fire.

The man lowered his gun along with his head as Seras rushed around the table to help him. She knelt down beside him and began assessing his wounds. He was covered in multiple bites, including a large one on his neck; a bandage had been placed over it, but it was black with his blood. "What happened?" Seras asked. "Can you speak?"

The man coughed, flecks of blood flew past his lips and onto his chest. "Don't worry about me…" he said weakly. "Worry about…the others."

"What others? Are there other survivors? Where are they?" Seras asked. _He looks done for. His wounds are severe…_

"I-in the other rooms. I don't know where exactly…" The man coughed up more blood and sighed. His dark skin had taken on an ashen pallor; Seras wondered how long it would be before he turned into a zombie.

"We should get you fixed up first," Seras said. "I can't leave you here to die."

With great effort and pain, the man reached into his uniform pocket and pulled out a blue, plastic card. "Use this on the computer to unlock the doors. I'm dead, leave me," he said hoarsely.

Seras took the card. "I can't…"

The man raised his gun and pointed it at Seras' face. "Go…" he whispered.

Seras stood up, not for fear of the gun, but out of respect to the dying man's wishes. She considered putting a bolt in his head and taking the gun, but shook that awful thought from her mind. _Some of my master must be rubbing off on me,_ she thought. "Thank you. I'll come back if I can."

For a moment, she thought she might explore the other door in the office and see where it led, but decided to use the card on the computer first. She went back out into the hall and made her way over to the receptionist desk, where her ears picked up the sound of the door she had just exited locking. She sighed, and wondered how much blood the man had lost locking the door. _He's probably dead, propped up against it,_ she thought. _And now I can't get his gun without wailing on the door and making a racket._

Disturbed at her own ruthless thinking, Seras quickly used the car key to unlock the two doors in the police station reception area. When she heard the loud _click_ of the doors unlocking simultaneously, she made her way to the set of double door on the police station's west side.

With her crossbow ready to fire, Seras entered the room suspects where processed in. There were benches along the wall and a small room behind a counter, shielded with glass. Thankfully, this room was empty as well.

Lying on the bench was a yellow pad of notebook paper with a memo scrawled on it. Seras picked it up and began to read, her frown growing as she read. According to the memo, the weapons and ammunition the police had access to had been scattered and hidden in order to keep the out of mutant hands.

_Can zombies use guns?_ Seras thought, cringing a little. _And just where are these mutants I've heard so much about?_ Seras scanned the rest of the memo, hoping it would mention where the weapons had been stashed but it did not. She flung it back on the bench and made her way through the room, past a bulletin board and down a narrow hall.

Her body tensed when something moved past the window at the end of the hall. Seras blinked, making sure her eyes weren't playing tricks. Keeping her crossbow pointed at the window, she made her way over to it and peered outside. She could see about a dozen zombie cops out in the courtyard; what they were scheming, if anything, she couldn't tell.

If she was ever glad she was a vampire, it was now. _I can't imagine a human being stuck in this mess and surviving,_ she thought. With some reluctance, she opened the door next to the window and progressed further into the police station.

**To be continued…**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

There was an open fuse box at the end of the short hall where it hooked right. Seras could see the beginning of a row of windows, the metal shutters that where supposed to drop down over them in emergencies were still up, likely due to the sparks coming out of the fuse box.

She could also smell blood. It didn't smell fresh, but neither was it too old to be considered undrinkable. Her mouth twisted with disgust at the thought. She took her blood via medical packs, not from bodies, living or dead.

Keeping in mind what she had seen in the window a moment ago, she cautiously made her way forward, where she stopped. On the floor, around the corner, was a body wearing a blue police officer uniform. Blood was everywhere, so much that Seras didn't immediately realize the cop was missing his head.

_I've seen too many dead cops in my lifetime,_ she thought. _Seems to be a reoccurring theme with me._ She knelt down by the body and began to examine it. Part of it was that she wanted to see how close she could get to all of that delicious blood and still resist tasting it.

Whatever had killed him, it hadn't done it swiftly. There were long, jagged slash marks in the man's torso and legs. Seras looked him over for human bite marks and saw none. There was a blood trail leading down the hall, so whatever had done it had started its attack somewhere else. Of the head, there was no sign. _Looks like it was…twisted off or something,_ she thought, studying the flaps of skin and muscle that used to be the man's neck.

She was so intent on figuring out what had killed the man that she almost didn't see it. She heard it well enough though. From above her on the ceiling came a raspy kind of breathing, the kind a person makes when their sick and have phlegm deep in their throat.

Seras looked up and leapt backward as the long sharp tongue of what looked to be an inside-out man swiped at her. She landed on her rear-end sending a jolt of pain up her spine. Used to these sorts of situations, Seras fired a bolt into the most vital looking spot on the creature, the wrinkled grey mass on its head. If she was lucky, the thing really was inside out and that was its brain.

The bolt sunk into the creature's head, making it snarl and back up along the ceiling like some horrid fly. Its ridiculously long claws bit into the ceiling, causing plaster to fall onto the floor. _How the hell did that thing sneak up on me? Guess its not so quiet with a crossbow bolt in its head._ Seras quickly loaded another bolt, happy that she was getting good at using it.

The creature dropped from the ceiling and landed on all four of its feet, like a cat. It then squatted, like a frog, and waved its long, sharp, tongue at her. Seras had a brief moment to wonder just what the hell it was, and then realized that it was likely one of the mutants she had been expecting.

For a moment, she wondered if it had lost sight of her. The thing had no eyes that she could see. Half of its head seemed to be teeth. Maybe it was like the dinosaur in that Jurassic Park movie she had seen, and couldn't see her if she didn't move.

When it dropped back on all fours and starting scuttling towards her, she threw that theory out and shot it again. The bolt buried into the thing's head next to the other one, causing it to sprawl out on its stomach and writhe. As is shook, it let out a high pitched squeal that made Seras wince.

"Good God," Seras said, as it stopped moving. "What in the bloody hell is that thing?" When she was sure it wasn't going to move again, she retrieved her bolts from its head. Clearly, it was a mutant of some sort. What it had been originally, she had no idea. Aside from having a humanoid outline, it was like nothing she had ever seen or heard of before. "I wish I had brought a camera," she said to herself, wondering how she was going to describe the horrid thing in her report.

That reminded her of her original problem: making contact with Sir Integra. Maybe one of the survivors would know of a way to do that. Leaving the foul creature's corpse behind, Seras trotted off down the hall, the fuse box still sparking. _I hope that doesn't start a fire,_ she thought.

She took a look out one of the windows and felt her blood run cold. These windows were on the ground level facing the courtyard. She squinted into the gloom, her vampire eyes seeing things as though it were high noon. The fence that separated the police station grounds from the street was down. Seras could see dozens of wobbling forms milling about broken cars and flaming barricades. Here and there, groups of zombies had fallen on corpses for a mass feeding.

Seras imagined that the dead cop at the end of the hall had come here to try and repair the fuse box that would cause the metal shutters to drop over the windows. While on his way to do that, he was chased by the creature which killed him.

Seras jogged back to the end of the hall and began looking around. When she didn't see what she was looking for, she searched the man's pockets, keeping an eye on the presumably dead monster next to him.

She pulled out a long, plastic coated wire and a pair of rubber handled pliers. Having little clue as to what she was doing, Seras attached one end of wire to the burnt out one that was throwing out sparks. She only got electrocuted once, and she shrieked a little, but eventually she fixed the fuse.

The instant there was a circuit, the metal shutters fell over the windows with a loud crash. _Hopefully that didn't sound like a dinner bell to the ones outside…or inside for that matter,_ she thought.

With the hallway secured, she gave a brief salute to the headless body and ran down the hall, deeper into the station.

**To be continued…**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

Seras stepped through the two double doors and was aghast at the state of the briefing room. There was no blood or walking corpses, but the skewed chairs, scattered papers and spilt coffee showed that a storm of half-mad planning had occurred here, and had ultimately failed to work.

Seras made her way up the middle between the chairs towards the large green chalkboard that dominated the other side of the room. _Maybe it'll tell me where those weapon caches are hidden or where the other survivors are hiding,_ she thought. Her hopes died as her eyes got lost in the hectic maze of chalk scrawls. Clearly the cops in America operated a little differently than they did in England, plus the circumstances weren't exactly normal.

Seras went into a small storage room past the chalkboard and found that it was a little bigger than it looked from the outside. The fireplace in the left wall told Seras that the police station might not have always been such. A house perhaps? A large funeral home? It didn't really matter now.

The fireplace contained a small heap of charred wood. Seras could smell the scent of old smoke. _Someone lit that fire recently,_ she thought, puzzled. _Why would someone light such an old thing in such a small place?_

She could see that the painting sitting above the fireplace, covering what had been a hole in the chimney, had suffered damage caused by the lighting of the fire. _Well that's just bizarre,_ she thought, not being able to make much sense out of the room.

Not finding anything particularly important, Seras left the briefing room and continued down the hallway. She became quite nervous when walking down it, feeling the draft coming through the wall to her right. Seras guessed that it had once been lined with several large windows. Now all that made up the wall was an amalgam of boards and plywood sheets, nailed up haphazardly in a rushed effort to keep invading cannibals out. Judging by the blood covering many of the boards it had only been partially successful.

Seras peered through one of the gaps made by a two-by-four and a sheet of tin. Only a short patch of lawn and a downed metal-link fence separated the wall and what looked to be a street. The building across the way was on fire, casting eerie shadows through the makeshift wall.

Seras kept moving, quickly, not wanting to come back through this way if she could help it. Ahead of her was a door. She opened it and without thinking, drove her elbow into the chin of a dead woman who lunged at her. The woman's head snapped back and she hit the ground. Seras stepped over her, seeing that the space beyond the woman was clear of zombies.

The other direction was not. Standing at the base if a stairwell was a fat, bloody zombie cop, accompanied by two large zombies who had likely come in off the street. The woman a her feet began to sit up, but Seras dealt a kick to her neck hard and fierce enough to snap the woman's neck, causing her to flop back down. She fired a bolt into the forehead of the fat cop as he and his friends moved towards her. The two to either side paid no attention to the other one's fall. Their hands went up and moans came out of their rotten throats as they advanced on Seras.

She quickly hung the crossbow on a loop in her belt and ran at the two zombies. As they lunged to bite, she grabbed them by the sides of their heads and brought the two skulls together with a resounding _crack_. Both fell to the ground, stunned by the blow to the head, but still moving. _I'm already covered in muck, why not?_ She brought her foot down hard on the skull of one zombie and then the other, popping them open like melons.

Now thoroughly covered in gore, Seras looked the fat cop over for a gun. _This is getting too messy for medieval weapons and hand-to-hand combat,_ she thought. The fat cop had conveniently lost his pistol at some point in his travels, much to Seras' dismay.

With all immediate threats to her person dealt with, Seras examined the area near the stairs. The grey door behind the zombie woman, a petite thing with short hair, was locked. Seras considered forcing the lock, but she had made enough noise as it was already. She gave a brief, human sounding, knock and waited for an answer. None.

The other door at the foot of the stairwell led into a darkroom. The only thing Seras found interesting was the large locker sitting up against the wall near the door. She found that it was locked, however. The lock was a shining gold color ringed by a polished, blue metal. _The same colors as that key I found,_ she thought.

She pulled the key out of her pocket and tried it on the lock. She was delighted that the door opened and even more delighted at what she found inside. Resting loosely inside a holster was a revolver. Seras drew it and looked it over. It was loaded and whoever owned it had taken good care of it. She could smell the gun oil on it and after a few moments of examination thought she knew how it worked.

To her even greater delight, there was a box of bullets and a fanny-pack in the bottom of the locker. Seras put the bullets in the little blue pack and strapped it around her waist along with the belt and gun holster. "I get to play cowboy it seems like," she said to herself. The revolver was a .45 too, not a small caliber in the least.

Even though she finally had a gun, Seras decided to keep the crossbow as her main weapon when she left the room. It was silent and the ammunition was reusable. "Waste not, want not," she whispered as she headed up the stairs to the second floor.

She passed a room with a boarded up door and three Greek-looking granite statues. The large one in the center looked as though it had been holding something like a torch, but the outstretched hand was empty. Not thinking anything of it, Seras continued on, awaiting her next encounter with hostile zombies.

The next room held a gruesome scene. The ground was littered corpses, former zombie cops judging by the amount of blood covering the fronts of their uniforms and faces. Someone had put bullets in their skulls but not before they had done a serious job of eating someone. That someone, who was lying in the center of the room, had been a cop, but that was as much as Seras could tell. Their torso lay chewed open and scooped out; the facial features had all been bitten off.

_Is it bad that I'm not disturbed by this?_ Seras thought, thinking back to the other times when she had seen the half-devoured corpses of police officers. The more Seras looked at it, the more she realized it really did disturb her. Cops who had died with at least some idea of what they were in for bothered her slightly less than these poor men who hadn't seen this coming. Plus the smell of the room was wonderful; she wanted to dive right into the bloody pile on the floor and drink until she couldn't drink anymore.

Shaking her head she decided to put this place behind her as fast as possible. Suddenly, something small and white darted down a hallway to the right. Seras leapt over the bodies and looked down the hall just in time to see a little girl, no older than twelve with short blond hair and a white blouse disappear through a door at the end of the hall. _She was alive,_ Seras thought, running down the hall after her. _A little girl, alive. I have to protect her._

**To be continued. **


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six.**

Seras pounded down the short hall where she had seen the girl dart off. Once away from the sweet stink being raised by the pile of corpses behind her, she began to smell acrid smoke. _Oh God, don't tell me the damned building is on fire,_ she thought, reaching the end of the hall where a small desk supporting a vase with no flowers stood next to the door.

The girl must have gone through the door. The handle wasn't hot, making Seras sure that at least the room beyond wasn't engulfed in flames. When she opened the door, she found that the room beyond was another hallway filled with thick, black smoke.

Seras squinted and coughed as the smoke attacked her eyes and nose. Quickly, she ducked beneath the smoke and scanned the hallway to her left and right for the shins of any zombies. She saw none, but noted that the hallway to her left took a sharp turn to the right.

Making her way towards where the hallway forked, Seras tried to stay bellow the smoke and have her crossbow ready to fire. Rounding the corner, she thought she saw the origin of all the smoke in the hallway.

At first, she wasn't sure what she was looking at; it seemed to be the smashed up cockpit of a helicopter protruding through the wall. The floor was also soaking wet, making Seras think that a water pipe had burst. _Maybe it put out the fire from the helicopter, _she thought, seeing that the chopper was burnt black along with the walls.

There was a door to the right of the chopper, but what had Seras' attention was the gaping hole in the wall to the left. She was no bomb expert, but it didn't look like the hole had been caused by the chopper or the ensuing fire. It looked more like a small bomb had gone off, clearing the way for whoever had set it. _Cleared the way for me too,_ Seras thought happily as she wondered who might be moving around the police station aside from the little girl.

The smoke had penetrated the short hallway beyond the chopper and severe damage had been done to the floor. Seras feared she might break through, so she stepped lightly. The giant stuffed tiger skin mounted at the end of a hallway along with the various paintings lining the walls made the place look more like a museum than a police station.

Seras was taken aback by one room in particular. The desk near the far wall made Seras think it was an office, and judging by the body of a blond woman in a white dress lying on the desk with a gaping red wound in her side, something bad had happened there.

Taking a sweeping glance around the room to check for threats, all she saw was the dead gazes of dozens of stuffed animal heads peering down through marble eyes. Cautiously, she crept forward, the crossbow ready to fire in case something jumped up from behind the desk or from the dark area off to her right.

When Seras felt that the room was safe, she further examined the body resting on the desk. The woman's blond hair was curly and she had been attractive before dying and turning blue. It was clear to Seras that she hadn't died on the desk; someone had laid her on there, nor could she see any bite marks on the woman, just the hole in her side.

The smell of the blood told her the woman hadn't been dead long. Probing the wound with a pen she picked up off the desk, Seras guessed it had been made by a weapon of some sort, unless one of those inside-out mutants had punched its sharp tongue through her, but the lack of other wounds made her doubt that.

Seras heard a gun go off and felt the familiar sensation of something ripping through her back. The bullet entered her right side, just bellow her shoulder blade and exited just beneath her breast. Seras screamed in pain and fell forward, dropping her crossbow.

She slid off the dead woman and fell to the floor on her back. She hadn't expected to be shot and the pain made her temporarily unable to move. _Damn it, Ireland all over again,_ she thought as footsteps approached her.

She lifted her head to see a fat man with short brown hair and a mustache holding a pistol. The wrinkles on his face suggested a man in his fifties or perhaps late forties. The maniacal look in his cold blue eyes left no doubt in Seras' mind that he had killed the woman on the desk. "Well, well, what do we have here?" he said, sounding as crazy as he looked. "A survivor? Oh, we simply can't have that."

The man drew closer and leveled the pistol at Seras' head. "Who are you?" she managed to ask, discretely moving her hand closer to the revolver on her hip.

"Brian Irons," the man said. "Chief of the Raccoon City Police Department. I thought I had killed everybody, but I'm glad you're here, whoever you are. I think I'll take a bit more time with you. I've got most of a clip left and…" he was interrupted by Seras firing the revolver at him without removing it from the holster. The bullet tore through the leather sheath and into Irons' stomach. Dropping his gun, he doubled over and sunk to his knees holding his wounded stomach.

Seras sat up, the pain from the wound in her back was beginning to dissipate. Her vampire blood would heal the wound shortly, but she knew her already persistent bloodlust would only become more pressing. Without medical blood packs to feed off she had the sinking feeling that she'd be forced to take it from the tap before she got back to England.

"Damn…you," the man said between his teeth. They had turned red as blood from his stomach welled up and out of his mouth, dribbling down onto his red tie and white shirt. "This wasn't…supposed to…" he said as he began crawling towards the wall behind the desk, meanwhile Seras got to her feet, using the desk to help her up.

Drawing the revolver, Seras made her way around the desk and pointed it at Irons as he began pulling himself up the wall. "Stop or I'll shoot again," she said. "I said stop!" Irons' hand went into his pocket and pulled out a square blue stone. Sliding a painting back to reveal a hidden panel, Irons' inserted the blue stone into a slot next to two other colored stones. "What are you doing?" Seras asked in her sternest police voice.

"What are you, British?" Irons spat as a secret door slid open behind him reveling a hidden hallway. "You sound like a cop. Who are you from? Did Umbrella send you?"

Seras picked up Irons' gun and stuck it in her belt. "No one sent me, I'm here on vacation. Now how about you tell me why you, the chief of police, is killing people? Have you gone barmy or what?"

Irons laughed and struggled to go through the secret door he had opened. The effort of opening it seemed to have zapped all of his energy though, and he sunk to the floor. "Vacation? Sure…you're probably with those damned mercenaries. I thought you were all mostly Russian though…"

Seras shook her head in frustration. "I don't know what you're talking about. What in god's name is going on around here? What do you know about Umbrella and the virus?"

Irons looked down at his wound and seemed to realize it was fatal. "I'm the one who made sure no one got out. I took care of all the phone lines and I'm the one who made sure there was no way out of town," Irons said, sounding sleepy. "They screwed me though…it wasn't supposed to happen like this…"

"Just how was it…never mind," Seras said. _I'm thinking like a cop. I need to think like a soldier…a scout or something._ "What about the virus? Is there a way to stop it?"

"Decapitation or destroying the brain," Irons said. "The virus spreads through fluid…once you're infected you're dead." Irons coughed, sending gobs of black blood out onto the floor.

Seras wanted to ask about the dead woman, but decided not to. "What about the others? I talked to an officer downstairs who said there were survivors and I saw a little girl come through here. Where are they?"

"A girl?" Irons managed to sound surprised even though he was dying. "Oh…Berkin's brat…she won't last long. The others are dead. I was saving Marvin for last…"

It wasn't like the dying to lie. Even evil people, as this man clearly was, had a hard time dying with lies on their lips; Seras knew this and decided to take him at his word. "Where does that passage lead?"

A terrible grin spread across Irons' blood soaked mouth. He didn't have the energy to laugh. "Sewers. The only way…out. You won't make it though."

Seras felt a little better. Irons didn't know she was a vampire and had likely assumed she was wearing body armor when she didn't die from being shot like she should have. If he thought going through the sewers to escape would be certain doom for her, he was wrong. "

Past the sewers," Irons continued. "Is the lab…a train…" What might have been a last laugh sounded more like a full blown choke. When Irons stopped hacking blood, his head slumped forward and he became still.

Seras switched the spent shell from the revolver with a fresh one and checked Irons' .38 to see how many bullets were in the clip. It held ten. Not much, but she'd take it. Picking up her crossbow, Seras stepped over Irons' corpse, already savoring the delightful smell of his blood.

"Not his…definitely not his," she said to herself wondering when and where she would eventually feed.

**To be continued…**


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven.**

Seras didn't feel bad about shooting Chief Irons in the stomach when she saw what he kept in the back room. It was down an rickety elevator at the end of a dark hallway and dimly lit by bare electric bulbs.

The room looked as though Irons had built it himself. The stained table with the manacles was rough around the edges and the bolts that held it together looked new. The shelves that lined the walls showcased various human body parts; mostly bones with a few jars of organs and preservative fluid.

Seras found a trap door at the far end that looked like it led down into some kind of water reclamation center. Seras was about to climb down when she remembered the little girl. There was no way she could have come through here, not with the door being hidden the way it was.

"I should find her, first," Seras said, heading back towards the elevator. As she rode it up, she chastised herself for once again not thinking like a soldier. A real soldier would ignore the girl and accomplish her mission. "I guess that makes me a bad soldier," she said as the elevator ground to a halt. She slid the door open and reentered Irons' office and stepped over his corpse.

The stink of his blood made her mouth water and her stomach grumble. Her first drink from a human wasn't going to be Chief Irons and so she gritted her teeth and went through a door off to the right hand corner of the room.

The room she entered was pitch black, but her eyes could still see. If she were a human cop, she would be worried about unseen enemies attacking from the darkness. She would also probably be dead. _I'm one of the monsters,_ she thought somewhat bitterly. _What do I have to be afraid of?_

When she spied the little girl crouched in the corner and staring wide eyed towards the sound of her footsteps, most likely wondering who they belonged to, she felt her fangs distend."Oh God," Seras gasped, covering her mouth with a hand. _No, no, no, no._

"Who's there?" the little girl called out, getting ready to run.

Seras flicked on the light, hoping that she wouldn't frighten the girl into running. The girl didn't run, instead she seemed puzzled and then relieved. "Are you a cop?" the girl asked.

"Yes. My name is Seras…are you okay?"

"I-I think so…you're not a zombie?"

_No, just a vampire. Nothing to worry about._ "No, I'm human. I'm going to get you out of here, but I need to ask you a few questions, okay?"

"Okay."

"Is there anyone else alive in the police station?" Seras asked, wishing she had a better bedside manner.

The girl nodded. "I think so. I saw a lady wearing red earlier. I was going to let her know I was hiding in the vent shaft but then some dogs chased her away."

_They probably ate her,_ Seras thought. "Where are your parents?"

The little girl shook her head and began to fondle the gold pendant she wore around her neck. Seras took her eyes off the girl's throat when she caught them lingering. "I don't know. They work at the Umbrella lab. They told me to come here where it would be safe."

Seras' eyes brightened a little. "Have you been to the lab?"

Sheri shrugged and bit her lip. "Parts of it. I'm not allowed to go to where mommy and daddy work. Actually, I was only there once…usually I'm home with the babysitter."

Seras fixed her eyes on a fancy box sitting on the other side of the room. Looking at the girl was making her bloodlust roil. Perhaps leaving her to her own devices would have been a better idea. If the girl had to be eaten by a monster, Seras didn't want to be the eater. "Well we need to go to the lab through the sewers. There's a train down there that will take us out of town." _Assuming Irons knew what he was talking about, that is._ "Oh…what's your name?"

"Sheri. Sheri Berkin."

"Come on, Sheri," Seras said, taking her by the hand and leading her back to Irons' office. "Hold on a second," Seras said, before entering the office. "Wait here. There's something in there you don't need to see."

"Is it the dead lady?" Sheri asked. "I already saw. The police chief did it, I think."

The girl clearly had been shaken by the horrors she had witnessed, but the tone of her voice suggested that a numbness had settled over her. Seras supposed a person could only see so much horror before the brain simply stopped reacting to it.

Seras led Sheri past the office and its corpses, down the elevator and into Irons' torture room. Hoping Sheri wouldn't realize the significance of the room, Seras quickly made her way to the trap door. "I'll go down first to make sure it's safe. Wait here."

Seras' feet landed hard on the metal catwalk. Bellow her was a large pool of brackish water. At the end of the catwalk was another steel ladder which had to lead deeper into the sewers if what Irons had said was true.

Seras was glad she had come down first. Writhing halfway down the catwalk was a lump of brown flesh covered in ominous looking red orifices. "What in the name of…" Seras said, drawing her revolver and Irons' gun.

The thing began to twitch and secret a green, viscous ooze. Seras began shooting it immediately. As she shot, it began to mutate and grow, sprouting a head, arms, legs and a tail. The thing looked like nothing Seras had ever seen before in her life. It had a long neck that tapered off into a misshapen, strangely humanoid, head. Two large bulbous eyes protruded from the side of the head, reminding Seras of a bubble-eyed fish.

It had not enjoyed being shot. Seras had emptied all of Irons' gun into it, causing green fluid to leak out of its body. Seras backed up, considering heading back up the ladder and rethinking her strategy. The creature began to make choking sounds as its throat and head began undulating. It vomited up what looked like a chunk of flesh. When the glob hit the ground and began crawling towards Seras, she shot it. causing it to explode, sending green ooze everywhere.

The thing vomited three more of the squiggling creatures and they began crawling towards her immediately. Again, she shot them with the revolver in rapid succession and put the last two bullets into the monsters head.

Backing up and reloading, she wondered if she was going to have to attack the thing bare handed. _I could try and throw it over the side and into the water,_ she thought, closing the cylinder and firing again. _But I don't want to touch it…and I want it dead._

Seras kept shooting the creature in favor of the things it kept puking up. When they got close, she crushed them with her foot. After emptying two more cylinders worth of revolver bullets into the creatures head, popping both eyes and exposing the green, bizarre organs within its head, Seras was about to retreat up the ladder.

She stopped when the thing began to twitch violently and shrivel. A few stunted creatures escaped the dying body, but stopped moving shortly after leaving the parent monster. Seras reloaded the revolver again and holstered it, being reasonably sure the thing was in its death throes.

She watched it for a moment to make sure it was dead and then called up to Sheri. "It's safe. You can come down now."

Sheri slowly climbed down the ladder and cast a disgusted, frightened glance at the thing Seras had killed. "What is it?"

"I have no idea," Seras said, glad that the thing hadn't injured her and made her craving for blood worse. The rush from the battle had been bad enough; Sheri was looking far too tasty for Seras' liking.

They walked to the end of the catwalk where there was a ladder that Seras decided to go up first, wanting to be able to confront any danger that happened to be up there. It would give her an excuse not to look at Sheri too much. Hopefully, they would have blood in the lab. _I just need to make sure it's clean and not filled with weird viruses._

**To be continued…**


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight.**

They were standing still in a tunnel filled with water up to their knees. Seras had told Sheri to stop moving and be quiet; the sewers were bustling with activity. Sheri took no notice of it as she clung to Seras' hip; her human ears couldn't pick up the sounds Seras was hearing.

Exactly what she was listening too, she couldn't tell. There was the definite echo of water being sloshed around up ahead-zombies perhaps-along with small vibrations in the walls. Seras put her ear against the wall to try and hear better, but the sounds were mixed with that of machinery.

"What is it?" Sheri asked in a whisper.

"It's not safe down here either," Seras said. "I want you to stick close to me, but run like crazy when I tell you to, understand?"

Sheri nodded and inched closer to Seras. "Are there zombies down here too?"

"I think so," Seras said. "It's not really them I'm worried about though."

Seras sensed Sheri's fear and winced. For a cop, she wasn't very good at comforting scared little girls. "Sheri, were there telephones in the lab? Did you see any?"

Sheri thought for a moment and looked up at Seras with concern. "I-I don't remember…maybe. Can we call for help?"

"We can try, but we might have to escape on our own all the same," Seras said. She still needed to call Sir Integra and make a report. Raccoon City was America's problem, but if the same thing were happening in England, it needed to be stopped. _Master would be having a ball if he were here I bet,_ Seras thought.

She began walking slowly down the tunnel with Sheri in tow. "Try not to slosh too much," Seras said. "We want to be sneaky." Sheri nodded and they continued through the dark sewer.

"It's dark," Sheri said. "How are we going to see our way around?"

Sheri was right, the sewers had gotten dark the deeper they traveled. Seras could see perfectly, but she realized Sheri couldn't. "Don't worry, I can see fine."

Sheri looked confused, but didn't ask questions. Seras didn't know how the little girl would react if she caught on that she was a vampire. _She'd probably run off screaming and make this a lot harder than it has to be._

They came to a room with a deep pool in the center of it. In the center of the pool was a pole supporting a walkway above their heads; on the other side was the door Seras thought they might want to go through. She considered swimming across, but one look in the murky green depths told her that would be a bad idea. Something, she couldn't tell what exactly, was swimming around in the water. _Knowing this place, it's likely some kind of bloody mutant piranha._

Seras spied a valve handle and turned it, wondering what might happen. She smiled when the pole in the center of the pool began to rotate, lowering the walkway across the creature infested water. When she got to the other side, she turned another valve, sending the walkway back up. "Now nothing will follow us," Seras said.

Sheri watched the walkway ascend with some uncertainty. There were lights in this part of the sewer and Seras had sensed the girl calm a bit once she could see again. _Humans are awfully dependant on light,_ Seras thought, a little upset that she was thinking about humans as something other than herself.

On the other side of the door was a large tunnel that took a harsh bend to the left after fifty feet. Seras took a few steps down and stopped, putting her hand on Sheri's shoulder. "Don't move," she whispered. She could sense something; it was up ahead around the bend. It had a wet smell to it and she could hear breathing.

"What is it?" Sheri whispered back, seemingly able to sense it as well.

Seras looked back; they had to go through here, there was no other way. "Stay here," she whispered. "If something, anything, I don't care what, comes through that door behind us, you run as fast as you can to me. Understand?"

Sheri nodded and gave the door a wary look. Seras wasn't worried about what was behind them, it was the thing up ahead that had her concerned. With the crossbow ready to be drawn and fired if she needed it, and the revolver out with six bullets in her pocket ready to go once the gun was empty, she advanced up the corridor.

She knew she could kill whatever it was but it might wound her. If she took damage, her body would heal it. Even if the fighting made her tired, her undead form would burn blood to rejuvenate her.

She was hungry enough as it was, any more blood burning and she wouldn't be able to trust herself around the girl. _I'm not drinking zombie blood either,_ she vowed. Whatever virus was coursing through their putrid veins might make her into something worse than a hungry vampire.

She peered around the corner and gasped. Nearly seventy yards down the corridor was the biggest alligator she had ever seen. It filled most of the large passageway which was big enough to drive a truck through with room to spare. Its mouth was partway open, sucking in air and letting it out in raspy breaths.

It must have tasted her in the air. All of a sudden it was plodding quickly down the corridor, its mouth ready to snap her up and tear her apart. If push came to shove, she could charge down the thing's mouth and rip off its jaw, but that would waste energy and likely cause injury. She had to find a way to take the thing out without damaging herself.

She caught sight of a large oxygen tank mounted on the left-hand side of the wall. Her brain leapt to a movie she had seen with a giant shark getting blown up after the hero of the movie tricked it into eating a high-pressure tank and then shot it. She stuck the revolver in her waistband, dashed forward, and ripped the tank off the wall; an easy feat for her. With the alligator still rushing at her, she threw the tank at its mouth.

Just like in the movie with the shark, it did. She didn't waste any time drawing the revolver and shooting. When the explosion knocked her backward, slamming her against the wall, she wished she had wasted some time in backing up.

The world had become a loud buzzing. Sheri's shouts were muffled and so were her panicked footsteps as she came rushing to Seras' side. She blinked and saw what was left of the alligator. The top half of its head had been blown off completely, killing it for sure. "Seras!" Sheri shouted, shaking while tears streamed down her face. "Seras!"

Seras shook her head and looked down at her stomach. It was covered in alligator blood and there was a jagged piece of steel sticking out of it. Seras rolled away from Sheri, making her wince in pain and pulled out the piece of metal. A human would be looking a long and painful death, but for her it would ten minutes of itching and agony before her blood healed the wound.

"I'm fine," Seras said. "It's from the alligator." The back of her head hurt. She felt it and found large lump. Something else that would need healing. _Bloody hell, I got tore up after all._

"You're hurt," Sheri said. "You need a doctor." The girl was choking back the brunt of her tears; clearly she had seen the shard of metal.

"N-no, really I'm alright. I just need a few minutes. The metal only nicked me. It just tore my uniform."

Sheri looked at Seras' stomach. The blood from the alligator made telling how badly she had really been hurt difficult. Sheri seemed to believe Seras, but still looked unsure.

Now that she could smell the blood, she wanted to lap it all up. It was disgusting animal blood, but it was warm and fresh. It was lying on gobs and pools all over the place. The alligator itself was still bleeding rivers of the stuff. Seras shut her eyes tight and breathed through her mouth. Now she could taste it. She dared a lick around her lips and caught a drop or two. It was disgusting, but her body needed it.

Seemingly against her will, one of her eyes opened and looked at Sheri. Instinctively, the girl moved away a few inches. "Seras?" she said, wondering if she was in trouble.

_Fight it, fight it, fight it, damn you fight…_the urge to tear the girl's throat open and drain her was powerful. Who cared about shitty alligator blood when there was a perfectly good virgin sitting right there!? _She's twelve…you're supposed to be protecting her…you'll be no better than a zombie, or that maniac Irons._

"Go down the hall and close your eyes," Seras said, through her teeth. "I have to do something you can't see."

The girl didn't move. "What? Are you really okay?"

"Just go," Seras shouted. Sheri looked as though she would cry again, but got up and ran back to the end hall and did as she was told. Seras stood, causing the pain her stomach to increase. She staggered over to alligator corpse, hopefully out of Sheri's line of sight, and began swallowing mouthfuls of the thing's blood.

It was disgusting and she knew she would never be able to satisfy herself with it. Still, the sheer amount did much to take the edge off the craving. She would need human blood soon, but now she felt as though she could hold out long enough to not turn Sheri into a field ration.

She did her best to wipe the blood from her face and hoped that it would be enough to not make Sheri suspicious. "Sheri," she said as she walked down the hall. "It's alright now, I did it."

Sheri turned, her eyes red and swollen. "You're okay?"

"Right as rain, love," she said smiling. "Are you ready?"

Sheri nodded and took Seras' hand. They both marveled at the size of the dead alligator as they walked past. "Did my parents make this?" Sheri asked.

"Maybe," Seras said, immediately realizing that was the wrong answer. "I doubt it though. I think that virus makes certain things grow."

"My parents were working on something called the G-Virus. I heard them arguing about it one time."

"Ah," Seras said, not knowing what to tell her. "Maybe they'll know how to stop it." Maybe they did and maybe they didn't. It was a moot point for Seras. Everyone who had become a zombie was as good as dead; there was no coming back. Raccoon City was toast no matter what happened now. The only thing she could do was make sure it never happened in England.

A more pressing thought was how to avoid eating the little girl.

**To be continued…**


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine.**

The tunnel ended with a waterfall that was little more than an artificial water curtain meant to conceal the door behind it. Seras spotted it easily in the dark and guessed that it must be the entrance to the laboratory.

Seras noticed a control box on the wall to their right but was really caught her attention was a pair of spiders. One was clinging the wall on the left, near an alcove, while the other was stuck to the ceiling. Both looked like they weighed two-hundred pounds each.

"Don't move," Seras said, putting her hand on Sheri's should and shuffling her around behind her. Seras didn't know if Sheri could see the spiders in the darkness or not, and didn't want to alarm her.

"What is it, Seras?" Sheri asked. "Zombies?"

Seras unhooked the crossbow from her belt and made sure a bolt was notched. She took aim at the one on the ceiling and fired, burying a bolt in between the spider's eyes. Seras knew nothing of mutant spider anatomy and wasn't sure why it came skittering across the ceiling at her instead of falling dead to the floor.

"Get back," Seras shouted. "A spider, on the ceiling." She quickly reloaded the crossbow and fired again, this time only puncturing the abdomen. Still, the spider advanced, likely with the aim of dropping down on her.

The spider on the wall was moving as well. It crawled up the wall and onto the ceiling where it too came towards them. Seras didn't bother reloading the crossbow, she quickly hooked it back onto her belt and drew the revolver. This time when the spider on the ceiling was shot between the eyes, great chunks of spider meat went flying and the creature fell with a splash to the ground.

Sheri was screaming, not being able to see what Seras was shooting at. Seras took aim at the second spider and fired, killing it in the same manner she had the first. While she replaced the two spent shells, Seras heard the sound she had been dreading. Painful, hungry moans filled the tunnel and Seras tried to guess how many zombies the noise from the bullets had attracted.

"Come on, it's alright now," Seras said as she ushered Sheri over to the control box. The zombie moans were getting louder. None had entered the tunnel yet and Seras briefly thought they might be lucky in that the zombies didn't know where the shots came from. _Not likely,_ she thought. _They've got uncanny knack for pinpointing the sound of food._

The control box looked to be more like a key mechanism. There were two slots in it; one of the slots contained a silver coin with a wolf design. "What is it?" Sheri asked.

"It's a special lock," Seras said. It looks like it takes two coins…it has one, but we need to find the other." _And we need to find it fast…before those damned things get here and I have to fight again._

Seras grabbed Sheri by the arm and led her over to the alcove, where she helped boost her up over the edge. The girl seemed happy to be in the glow of the dim light by the door and Seras thought of how frightening it must be to be running about darkened sewer tunnels filled with monsters. _This would be so much easier if I were alone,_ she thought as she opened the door, the gun ready to fire.

The door opened onto a walkway that lead up and over a deep pool of sewage and refuse. Seras immediately saw a blond woman in a white lab coat holding a gun. Sheri's cry of "Mommy!" stopped her instinct to shoot.

"Sheri!" the woman said, running forward, her arms stretched out to hug her daughter. The two embraced, leaving Seras to wonder what this would lead to.

"Who are you?" Sheri's mother said, casting a death glare at Seras.

"This is Seras," Sheri said, looking back. "She rescued me from the police station."

Sheri's mother stood. She didn't level her weapon at Seras, but it was clear that she wanted to. "I sent her there to be safe. Why the hell did you bring her here?"

Seras' jaw dropped in outrage. "Safe? There was nothing safe about that bloody evil place. It had been overrun and that police chief was a complete psychopath…"

"Never mind," Sheri's mother said. She seemed tired. Seras could see some of Sheri's features on her face, only they looked incredibly worn. "My name is Annette. Annette Birkin. I used to work for Umbrella."

_This woman is important,_ Seras thought. _Possibly more important than that Valentine woman I was supposed to find._ "Pleased to meet you. Like Sheri said, I'm Seras."

"Seras? Tell me Seras, who are you from?" Annette's gun arm was tensing, meaning she was about to shoot. For their sakes, Seras hoped she didn't.

"I'm a tourist…I was supposed to be on vacation."

Annette snorted sarcastically as a worried look spread over Sheri's face. "Whoever sent you needs to teach you to lie better. Are you from Umbrella? Here to collect the sample? The other murderers from your company beat you to it I'm afraid."

Seras shook her head. "I'm not from Umbrella. Quite the opposite actually." _Oops, said too much._

Annette leveled her gun at Seras as she shoved Sheri behind her. "No, mommy," Sheri said, tugging at her coat.

"Quiet, Sheri. This woman was using you to get to me. To get to the sample. Who are you from? Who else is involved?"

"British Intelligence," Seras said quickly, dreading what Sir Integra would do to her if she mentioned Hellsing to someone like Annette. "Definitely not friends of Umbrella."

Annette seemed to be considering something. Seras scanned her face and tried to figure out what. "You didn't try to threaten my daughter," Annette said. "And I suppose shooting you after bringing her to me safely would be a poor way to thank you."

She lowered the gun and Seras was thankful that she wouldn't have to kill Annette Birkin in front of her own daughter, although the blood would have been welcome. "Irons said there was a train leading out of town somewhere in the lab. Is that true?"

Annette sighed. "There is a train tunnel, but…."

"But what?" Seras didn't like her tone. Nothing about this mission was going the way it was supposed to.

"The train self-destructed as part of the auto-quarantine. Their plan was to contaminate the city, but not let the infection spread any farther. We're effectively trapped in Umbrella's little zoo."

Sheri looked up at her mother, not at all happy to hear such bleak words come from her all powerful mother. "How are we going to escape? And what about Daddy?"

A look flashed across Annette's face. _Umbrella's murderers…that's what she had said,_ Seras thought, realizing Sheri's father was dead. "You're father is fine," Annette said. "We'll catch up with him later once we've escaped."

Seras wasn't at all sure Sheri bought that story, but the girl seemed to realize that now wasn't the best time to go into it. _She must have aged ten years in the past few days,_ Seras thought. _I know the feeling._

"So then there's nothing in the lab for us then," Seras said, suddenly remembering the zombies that would soon be behind them, clogging the passage. "The streets are pretty much a lost cause too. And so that leaves…"

"The lab might still be an option," Annette said. The train is gone, but the tunnel isn't. Although I'm pretty sure the access point had collapsed…"

Seras could hear splashing through the door. It was hard to tell how many had showed up, but she thought she could hear them feasting on the spider carcasses. "What kinds of things were you making in that lab?" Seras asked, an idea forming in her head.

Annette frowned and after a moment, covered Sheri's ears. "We were part of Umbrella's bio-weapons sub-division. The T and G viruses have different effects on different organisms…the spiders you no doubt saw out there are one such effect."

"So there are giant bugs running lose in the lab then? Funny, I seem to recall having met something in the police station that looked a bit more like a demon from hell," Seras said.

Annette took a deep breath. "The large animals and the zombies are only a side effect. I don't know what it was you saw, but the virus isn't the actual weapon. The weapon is the organism that the virus had infected. The actual…monsters, if you will, are created with a combination of genetic manipulation, hormone treatment, and surgery. The virus makes them more resilient and triggers certain mutations."

_Maybe I can hack it as a spy, _Seras thought, filing the information away for her report to Integra. "Right, so the lab is filled with horrible monsters. And am I to understand that the people working down there were completely unarmed?"

Annette's eyes lit up as she realized what Seras was getting at. "You want to know if there are weapons down in the lab? Yes, there's an armory, but I don't have the key to it."

_No, but maybe I can tear the bloody door of its hinges._ "We'll worry about that when we get there. If it's no good, then we'll make a break for the train tunnel. But if we can get a decent stock of weapons, maybe we can go topside and find a way to shoot our way through."

Annette looked down at Sheri, uncertain. "That might be all well and good for you, but I'm just a scientist and she's only a little girl. We're not the blasting types."

"If the lab is as bad as you say, you might have to be either way. We'll check the tunnel just to be sure. But if it's a goner, I'll give you some pointers on how to shoot."

A loud moan slipped through the door and into their ears. Seras checked her revolver and her crossbow. "You wouldn't happen to know where the missing coin to that lock is?"

Annette reached into her pocket and removed something gold and circular. "I was saving it, in case someone else came through. I thought someone else was running around down here, but I guess it was you two."

"Must have been," Seras said, putting her hand on the door handle and opening it.

**To be continued…**


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten.**

Three zombies had climbed up over the ledge and into the alcove. Their hungry moans sounded above the roar of the waterfall when they saw Seras step through the door; with outstretched arms, they came shambling towards her.

"Lookout!" Annette shouted from behind while Sheri let out a shriek. Seras took a deep breath to calm herself. _Don't get exited,_ she thought as she raised the crossbow and aimed it at the closest zombie's head. _If you get too excited, you might eat somebody._

She fired and the bolt struck the zombie through the eye, causing it to splatter and run down the corpse's face as it collapsed. The two behind it took no notice and nearly tripped over the fallen body.

Seras quickly hooked the crossbow back on her belt and rushed forward. She dealt a stiff kick to the chest of the zombie on her left, sending it toppling backward. The other she snatched by the side of the head and slammed it into the wall as hard as she could, pulping its skull.

Her shoulders slumped when she saw that the tunnel beyond contained half a dozen more. The one she had kicked began to sit up; as it did, she ran over and dealt it a kick to the neck, severing its head and sending it flying across the tunnel. She cast a glance back at Sheri and Annette, who looked nearly as terrified of her as they were of the zombies. "I guess being a zombie makes you a bit soggy," she said, smiling a little.

She turned back, certain that they were now more terrified of her than before. She reloaded the crossbow and checked to see how many bolts she had. There were plenty, but she was going to collect them afterward.

Shooting all of the zombies with the bow as they stood three feet bellow her in the tunnel was easy work. She even caught herself having a little fun as the last one went down. _Sick…these used to be innocent people,_ she thought, chastising herself.

She began harvesting her spent bolts, trying not to bend them as she removed them from the skulls of their targets. As she did so, she tried not to turn around and face Annette and Sheri as they splashed down in the shallow water of the tunnel. Annette inserted the Eagle coin, causing the waterfall to trickle to a stop and unlocking the door behind it just as Seras finished gathering her ammo.

"You said you were from British Intelligence?" Annette said, looking Seras up and down. "MI5?"

_Close enough._ "Yep, MI5…" Seras headed towards the door, deciding that she should be the one to take the lead.

The door led them through hastily constructed tunnels where the bedrock was still visible. Seras thought that the connection the sewers from the labs might have been an afterthought. _Likely to help spread the disease easier._ "Annette, do you know what kinds of monsters might be slinking around…exactly?" Seras asked as they walked.

Annette took a loud breath and was silent for a moment. Seras thought she might not get into too many details with Sheri around, but Annette began speaking, albeit reluctantly. "The human specimens are likely to be loose, so zombies…I think the biggest problem might be the lickers. They can climb and hunt by ambushing their prey, sometimes in groups."

Seras recalled the creature with the long, razor tongue she had killed in the police station. One had been bad enough, she didn't care to think about being attacked by two at the same time.

They came to a large outdoor service lift; the moon hung eerily in the sky, lighting it up the circular work area, while the windows on the lift car were dark. Seras wondered if there might be some sort of start-up procedure.

"We don't need to take that," Annette said, walking towards a ladder that lead up onto a walkway that surrounded the lift platform. "There's an elevator over this way that leads right into the laboratory. We can access the armory through there."

The elevator Annette spoke of was at the other end of the platform. Annette had managed to take the lead with Sheri following close behind. It made Seras uncomfortable to have them in front, but from what Annette said, lickers were more apt to attack from behind. _But the one that went after me came from the front,_ she thought, keeping an eye on the wall above them and her ears open for suspicious sounds.

They reached the elevator door without incident. Annette swiped a card through an electronic reader and there was a shrill beeping sound as the door slid open. The elevator was a tight fit for the three of them and Seras was worried about her crossbow going off accidentally while Annette rummaged in her pocket for a special key that would bring the elevator to the floor they wanted.

While Annette was searching, Seras heard something from over by the door where they had come in. She looked to see what her human companions could not; a clawed hand gripping the concrete wall beyond the service lift. Seras squinted for a better look and saw that whatever the thing climbing the wall was, it had at one time been human.

Its massive, lopsided torso was covered in a shredded white lab coat. Its tiny human legs were dressed in a pair of blue jeans that were bursting at the seems from swelling. One of the creature's arms had grown to a grotesque size and was tipped with blade-like claws.

When the thing had gained its footing on the wall, it plopped down onto the platform, attracting both Sheri and Annette's attention. "William!" Annette gasped just as she pulled the key from her pocket. She grabbed Sheri and buried the girls face in her coat so she wouldn't see what had become of her father.

The creature let out a roar that sounded vaguely human and began walking towards them. Annette turned the key and the elevator began to shut. Seras hoped there was a gun down bellow large enough to blast the thing she had just seen. _Too bad I couldn't bring my Harkonnen cannon,_ she thought. _Two rounds from that beast would do the trick._

Annette had become very still and Sheri was doing an admiral job of choking back sobs as the elevator descended. Seras, meanwhile, could smell their fear; it was nearly as bad as smelling fresh blood. She hoped the elevator ride would be short.

"Annette," Seras said.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Er…are there blood samples down in the lab?"

Annette looked at her with a raised eyebrow. "Yes, in a freezer. Why?"

"Clean blood? No diseases or anything?"

Annette nodded slowly. "Of course…but…"

"I don't want to talk about it," Seras said.

**To be continued…**


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven.**

Annette didn't ask anymore questions as the lift descended. When it floated to a stop, making Seras' stomach turn a flip, she let out a sigh of relief and stepped off the elevator first; glad to be out of the tiny area with two people who were looking more and more like food, Seras quickly surveyed their position.

The elevator had opened in a small room adjacent to a hallway. Seras walked forward, leaving Annette and Sheri to stand just outside of the elevator. Already, Sheri seemed to be pulling herself together while Annette had become unusually quiet and brooding. _Likely trying to think of a way to explain to the girl how her father turned into that mutant,_ Seras thought, looking both ways down the hall.

"Which way?" Seras asked, looking back at Annette and Sheri. Annette didn't seem to hear her. Instead, she was looking down at Sheri. "Annette, which way?" Seras asked again.

"Hm, oh…go left," Annette said, looking up and shaking her head to clear it. "That leads to the armory."

Seras held the crossbow with both hands, ready to fire, and kept the revolver loose are her side so she could draw it. "Watch our backs," Seras said to Annette. She didn't trust Annette to do a great job of covering against ambushes, so she kept her ears perked for any strange sounds.

When they came to places where the hallway branched off, Annette would quietly tell Seras which direction to take. The more corners and bends they took, the more apprehensive Seras became. In her hungered state, her ears might not pick out the sound of a licker's claws clacking on the metal surface of the hall from that of Sheri and Annette's footsteps.

The directions Annette was giving had them following a thin red line painted onto the floor. It was worn off in some places, but Seras thought that if something happened to Annette, she could grab Sheri and still be able to find the weapon cache.

"That's it, straight ahead," Annette said as the came to a long hallway that ended with a large brown door marked Armory . Seras could see that there was another corridor intersecting the one they were in, just before the armory's entrance.

"Wait here," Seras said, slowly walking up to the intersection. She was about to peer around the corner when a loud crash came from behind her. She turned and saw that a licker had entered the hallway between her and her two human charges. A vent cover swinging above the licker's head told Seras how it had got behind her.

Sheri screamed and Annette began firing. She shot with one hand while the other pushed Sheri backward. The shots went wide, rattling off the steel walls. One struck the licker in the arm, just above the claw. The beast didn't seem to feel the wound and instead, stuck out its freakishly long tongue and waved it in the air, as though stretching it out like a runner would stretch his legs before a race.

Seras took several paces forward, closing some of the distance between her and the licker. She leveled the crossbow at the things head and pulled the trigger. The bolt left the bow just as the vent cover above Seras broke, letting another licker fall on top of her. Seras fell forward, pinned flat to the ground by the monster; the weight of its arms and legs keeping hers flat to the floor and unable to gain much leverage. The bolt had imbedded itself uselessly in the licker's rump.

"Sheri, run!" Annette shouted. Seras could see her firing with both hands now as Sheri took a few steps back behind her mother. Annette kept firing, this time her shots were actually hitting the creature more often than not. Bits of blood and teeth flew off the licker as she fired; the licker's only response being to hiss.

Seras began squirming, but the licker had her pinned. She was strong enough to rip the thing to pieces, but lack of blood and the fact that she had no leverage made it so the licker, for the moment at least, had her at its mercy. _Great,_ she thought, _now the horrid thing will start chewing on my head…_only it didn't. It seemed to be watching its partner crawl forward towards the woman with the gun. _Maybe it thinks I'm dead. I mean, I am…sort of._

What the licker thought of her ceased to matter as Annette's gun clicked empty. She ejected the clip and began fishing into her pockets for another when the licker struck. Its tongue swung in a circle towards Annette's torso. There was a quick ripping sound, followed by a red gash along Annette's stomach. Blood and intestines roiled out of the wound and Annette fell to her knees with an "Oh…"

Sheri screamed. "Mommy!" and ran towards her mother.

"Sheri, run!" Seras shrieked at the top of her lungs. Sheri whimpered and did as she was told…sort of. She ran with her head looking back towards the end of the corridor. The licker flicked its tongue again, opening Annette's throat. She fell forward onto her stomach, her head flopping to one side, nearly severed. What seemed like gallons of blood washed over the floor.

When the scent of so much fresh human blood hit Seras' nose, she felt her entire body constrict as something pushed forward in her mind, edging her sense of self off to the side. It felt as though an invisible force had slid into her body, removing her control. With a heave, she brought her arms under her and did a push-up, lifting the licker enough to get a foot beneath her. She stood with the licker on her back, grabbed it by the head and threw it forward onto the ground.

The licker struck the floor hard and it began to kick like a cat, its razor claws threatening to tear Seras' face off if she got too close. One good stomp from her foot crushed the licker's skull. Now only one stood between her and her food.

The licker that had killed Annette now saw Seras as a threat to its meal. It turned and began flicking its tongue menacingly as it crawled forward. Seras caught the tongue with her left hand, not caring that it bit deeply into her palm and wrist. She pulled the licker closer towards her, cutting her hands to ribbons in the process. The licker shrieked and tried to back up while retracting its tongue.

A surge of anger at the licker's resistance made her yank the tongue hard. It snapped off at the base with a ripping pop sound and blood began to bubble from the wound. She rushed forward before the thing could skitter off and grabbed by the soft, grey matter on its head. She jammed the severed tongue into the thing's snarling mouth as deep down its throat as her elbow would allow. The licker began gagging, but Seras held it until it stopped moving.

Seras stood, and felt dizzy. Her body seemed to weigh three tons and some part of her knew that if she didn't get blood immediately, she was going to pass out and not wake for a very long time. The site of Annette's warm body made her stagger over to it, drop to her knees and began sucking up as much blood as she could.

She could hear Sheri crying, but it seemed far off and distant, coming from a world different than the one she was in now. All there was in this world was a cold metal floor, pools of fresh blood, and relief; sweet, sweet relief from what always felt like a constant gnawing in her gut. Once she had lapped up all the blood on the floor and sucked every last drop from the heap of human meat, she would be whole again. All the empty spaces in her would be filled and that damned chewing sensation in her stomach would be crushed forever.

_Or at least until the next time I need to do this,_ she thought. The thought marked her returned to some semblance of herself. The more blood she drank, the more she could think. _Oh God, I'm eating Sheri's mother…she's right over there for Christ's sake. I can hear her sobbing. Oh Jesus, what will she think of me? How am I going to get her away now; she must know I'm a vampire._

Many other thoughts came to her as she ate, none of them involved stopping the feast. She found herself being angry at Alucard for having done this to her. Two questions he had asked her: Are you a virgin and do you want to live? She hadn't asked to be shot and hadn't been told the price of living; the price she was paying now.

She was back to her old self when she slumped against the wall next to Annette's body. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Sheri curled into a ball on the floor at the end of the corridor. Seri was a brave girl, one with survival on her mind, but seeing her protector devour her mother's spilt blood after she had been killed by freakish monsters had been too much for the girl.

Seras stood up and wiped as much blood from her face as possible. She was still covered in it and decided to remove her white gloves. They were ruined anyway; one finger was missing and the palms were non-existent. Her hands though, had healed completely.

She also felt better than ever. She could hear things scuttling around in far off corridors and could vividly imagine what they looked like and what they were doing. She also discovered that she knew things about the lab that she hadn't before. A bit of thinking and she knew the way to the underground station, along with the fact that it was likely not going to get them out of there.

_Annette's memories,_ Seras thought. _Dear God, I really ate that woman…body and soul._ Her apprehensions surrounding the drinking of blood were proving to have been appropriate. She always felt a little guilty for having hang-ups about drinking it, but now she realized that she hadn't been fussy enough. _God, I_ am _a monster._

Thinking Sheri might be better off without her, she headed towards the armory but stopped after a few steps. Not only was she feeling Annette's feelings for the child, she had developed some of her own. _A real monster would leave her to fend for herself,_ Seras thought, turning back towards Sheri. Leaving the girl had never been part of the plan, and never would be.

"Sheri," Seras said. "We've still got to get out of here."

Sheri looked at Seras with wide eyes filled with stark terror. "G-go away," she said. "Y-your one of them; you're one of the monsters."

Seras would not go away. There was no way she could make Sheri okay with what had just happened, but whether Sheri liked it or not, they were leaving Raccoon City together.

**To be continued…**


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve.**

She expected Sheri to try and run. Instead, the girl had simply become like a rag doll and whimpered protests. Seras picked her up and threw her over her shoulder, forgoing the much sweeter baby-carry. She need a hand free to retrieve her crossbow. "Close your eyes, love," Seras said as they walked towards Sheri's mother. "Your mother is in a better place now."

"Put me down," Sheri said after Seras had picked up her crossbow. Seras did so, but kept Sheri facing the armory door. Sheri stood rooted to the spot and stared at the floor. "W-who are you?"

_What am I, is what you meant to ask,_ Seras thought as she took a deep breath. "I'm an agent from the Hellsing Organization. It's a group over in England that hunts…monsters."

"Is Seras your real name?" Sheri asked, quietly, still looking at her feet.

"Yes. Seras Victoria."

"And you're a monster," Sheri said, this time looking at Seras' shoes, stained in her mother's blood.

Seras thought the strait truth was her best bet. "Well, yes. I'm a vampire…Hellsing uses vampires to hunt down and kill other, evil, vampires. We thought this place might have vampires in it, so I was sent here to look around."

Sheri was silent for a long time. Seras was still shocked that the girl was taking all of this in so well; she really was remarkable. "You ate my mother," Sheri said.

Seras felt like she might cry. She shook her head and rubbed her eyes. Agents of Hellsing didn't cry. "I had to," Seras said, her voice cracking a little. She swallowed hard and tried to compose herself. "Blood fuels me…the monsters got her and they were going to get the rest of us. The hunger took over, Sheri, please understand."

Sheri shook her head and looked at the armory door. "Can we go?"

Seras nodded, knowing she couldn't expect any sort of forgiveness from Sheri, not so soon and perhaps not ever. Grudging acceptance would have to do.

The door to the armory was locked. There was a number keypad on the wall, but the light was off. Even if she knew the code, it wouldn't work. Instead, she used her newfound strength to wedge her fingers in the door and pry it open. For a moment, she was frightened at her own strength, but it faded when she saw what was beyond the door.

The wall to her left was lined with assault weapons of all types. Another wall had handguns galore, all with special attachments like laser sights and extended grips. There was body armor on the right wall, along with backpacks and ammunition.

Seras couldn't resists smiling. She felt like a child set loose in a candy store with a coupon good for a three hour shopping spree. Sheri didn't seem impressed as she walked into the room and sat down in a metal folding chair next to a table holding up a weapon sigh-out sheet.

Seras shut the door and began looking around. The temptation was to first admire all of the goodies, the second was to take them all. She forced all of that back and began thinking about what they could carry and what they would need.

Seras grabbed a backpack along with two fanny packs. She went over to the handgun wall and grabbed two clip-fed nine millimeter Berettas; no more fumbling with cylinders. Stuffing them into her belt, she grabbed two nine millimeter Uzis with straps and slung them over her chest. She also snatched a Colt 44. Magnum and stuck it in her belt around her back.

Moving over to the other wall, she took an M16 assault rifle, complete with shoulder strap, along with a twelve gage combat shotgun. Not really feeling the weight of any of these weapons, she decided to also grab a .308 hunting rifle with a night vision scope.

While looking for the smallest Kevlar vest they had in stock, for Sheri, she found a bandolier with ten pineapple grenades. "Put this on," Seras said to Sheri, holding out the vest. It was easily too large for her, but would offer at least some protection. Sheri accepted it grudgingly and began working in figuring out the straps.

When Seras felt she had enough guns, she loaded up the backpack with extra ammunition and clips. She also removed the scope from the rifle, remembering that she wouldn't need it.

With more weapons strapped to her than she had any right to carry, she turned towards Sheri and searched Annette's memories for the location of the train. Annette had only heavily expected it to be destroyed, she didn't know for sure. Seras knew they had to cover all of their bases before risking a trip to the surface.

"What would you like to do with your mother?" Seras asked.

Sheri shrugged. "We can't bury her, I guess."

"No, but we can make her comfy in here," Seras said, prying open the door. A slight prickle of fear went through Seras' heart as she looked at the empty hallway. Annette's body, along with that of the two lickers, were gone. Streaks of blood trailed down the hall and around the corner, the footprints of whatever had carried them off had been obliterated by the scuffing of the bodies.

Seras hadn't noticed Sheri come up and stand next to her. "W-where are they?" the girl asked.

Seras shrugged and wondered how she hadn't heard anything. _Too busy admiring my news toys,_ she thought bitterly. _Sometimes I think there's something wrong with me_. "I don't know…something must have took them."

She expected Sheri to cry, the knowledge of her mother's corpse being eaten by some grotesque thing being another hard blow to her psyche. Sheri didn't cry though, she merely took a few steps closer to Seras. _I guess that out of all the monsters that have taken bites out of her mother, I'm the nicest,_ she thought.

She also resolved to herself that the girl would get the best kind of care possible once this was over. She'd insist that Integra pay for any amount schooling, housing, and therapy she needed. "Stick close to me and pay attention. If you see anything, yell," Seras said. "We're going to the train station to see if it works. If it's broken, or we can't walk down the tunnel, we're going to go back up to the street and try to find another way out. Whatever happens, you stick close to me and if I tell you to run and hide, you do just that. Right?"

"Right," Sheri said.

An idea suddenly hit Seras and she kicked herself for having been slow to think about it. She searched Annette's memories and found what she was looking for: up three levels was a room that people in the lab used to speak with their bosses. Seras remembered using it to speak with executives in Raccoon City, usually to argue about who would have control over the G-virus project. Only once did she ever speak to someone overseas. It had been a short conversation with someone in Madagascar. If they could talk to people in Madagascar, they might also be equipped to make calls to London.

"We're going to upstairs," Seras said. "I need to make a phone call."

Sheri hadn't asked questions about the detour and only once did they run across something threatening. Five zombies stumbling down the corridor at them had been dropped quickly and efficiently by Seras' Berettas. She no longer cared about the noise she was making. She had enough weapons and ammo to kill everything in Raccoon City twice over.

The communication device was still functioning. Seras had expected it to not work, but a brief scan of Annette's memories to figure out how to operate it explained why. There were certain individuals that needed to file reports from the terminal after the disease broke out. Whether those people had forgotten to disable the device after using it, or hadn't had the chance to file the report yet, Seras didn't know or care.

She typed in the extensions she had been forced to memorize before leaving England and hoped they worked. She also hoped that Hellsing had precautions in place so that the number she had just dialed wouldn't end up in any of Umbrella's records.

"Seras?" came Integra's voice over the audio speaker. "Who is this?"

"It's me, Seras." The visual screen was blank, Hellsing not being equipped with visual input.

"Seras, where the hell have you been? Why didn't you report sooner?" Integra said. Seras could imagine her stern face through the blank monitor.

"I couldn't get a signal from my phone and all the lines in the city had been cut," Seras said.

"Cut? What do you mean? What in blazes is happening over there?"

Seras cleared her throat. "It's a long story, sir. I don't have time to explain in detail. The city is overrun by zombies, different than ghouls. I'm in Umbrella's secret lab, there are mutants everywhere. The whole thing was a setup by Umbrella to test their bio-weapons. I've got a little girl with me; she's the daughter of two of the researchers and we're trying to escape but I don't think it will be easy." There was silence from the other end and Seras thought the line might be broken. "Sir Integra, are you there?"

"I'm here, Seras. I'm also afraid I can't help you much. Getting you over there was a trick and a half; I doubt I can send a squad or Alucard over in time."

Now Seras was annoyed. "I wasn't asking for help," Seras said. "I'm merely making my report as I was ordered." Seras thought the blood in her might be making her brave.

Integra seemed to ignore Seras' tone. "Am I to understand that the recon mission you were sent to complete has changed somewhat?" Integra said.

"Only the part where I get back," Seras said. "Like I said, Umbrella is as bad as we thought. Sending Master to their headquarters would be highly appropriate."

"We'll see," Integra said. "When you return and make your full report, we can discuss how to deal with Umbrella over here. You said the town had been overrun? Get armed and exterminate them, mutants and all. As for the girl…"

"No," Seras said. "You don't understand. Everyone in this entire _city_ is dead. Dozens of mutants are everywhere, killing anything that's left with a pulse. I'm armed to the teeth, but I can't kill them all."

Integra cleared her throat. "That bad, eh? I'll trust your judgment. The original plan was for you to board a certain private airplane and take it to Mexico and from there, return via boat. I take it that flight has been cancelled?"

"Likely," Seras said, figuring the man who owned the airfield just outside of town would either be dead or gone. She had entered America via a major airline, but everyone had figured that her cover wasn't likely to last long enough for such a return flight. Seras Victoria was listed as dead and the identity she had flown under was only good for so long. "Plan B then?" Seras said.

"Yes," Integra said. "Get yourself a hotel room or a shack and make contact again. We'll have someone come and get you by the end of the week."

"What about the girl?" Seras asked. "She's alone. She also knows things…stuff Umbrella wouldn't want her talking about." _And maybe a few things Umbrella would like to know,_ Seras thought, thinking about how it hadn't been smart to tell Sheri she was a vampire from Hellsing.

"I'll make arrangements for her as well. You need to get out of there before the American military decides to take action. If they don't outright nuke the place, they'll apprehend you if they can. It won't take much for them to discover what you are."

"Understood, sir," Seras said. "Seras out."

Seras punched the control panel, destroying it. No one from Umbrella would ever be making a report from it again. "Who was that?" Sheri asked.

"My boss, Sir Integra. I think she'd like you."

"Is she a vampire too?"

Seras grinned. "Worse, she's a Hellsing."

**To be continued…**


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen.**

Seras had killed three lickers and twelve zombies on their way down to the train platform. The Berettas had worked nicely on the zombies, but when the lickers had attempted an ambush from the ceiling, Seras had drawn the magnum and killed them easily with direct shots to the head.

She had hardly felt the kick on the massive gun and had been able to hold it in such a way that would have snapped a human wrist when it fired. Perhaps escaping Raccoon City wouldn't be as hard as she thought. If she was careful and didn't get carried away, it would be a cinch. _I guess being a vampire has its perks,_ she thought.

As they made their way through a room lit only by emergency lights and filled with large orange containers, she remembered that she wouldn't be in this mess if she hadn't been a vampire. _I really need to stop complaining about being a vampire,_ she thought. _I'll just have to try and use it to do enough good so I can balance out all of the bad._

She pried open a door that led into a large hallway, clearly made so big for the purpose of hauling freight. A sign reading "Rail" made Seras walk quickly forward to peer around the bend. Sheri had to run a little to keep up.

Seras was faced with a wall of twisted steel and rock. The corridor had been subject to a cave-in so thorough she couldn't see past it to tell if it would be worth their time to try and dig through it or not. "Looks like it's topside for us," Seras said, leading Sheri back the way they had come.

Sheri hadn't spoken much at all since the communications room and Seras thought not talking was best for both of them. The gunfire was enough to give away their position, there was no need to give running updates on it by speaking.

Seras could sense that something was wrong when they went back into the dimly lit room with the storage tanks. Her senses had been perked since Annette's body had been stolen, and so far, paying attention had given a strange sort of sixth sense. "Run," Seras said. "Go back to the cave-in and hide."

Seras didn't want to have Sheri nearby after spying the thing perched atop one of the holding tanks. It began to move as Sheri followed Seras' instructions. The thing had two legs that it stood on, along with four massive claw-tipped arms on its giant torso. Sprouting from the top of the torso was a sort of head, skull-like in appearance with no lower jaw and a set of jagged teeth dangling from the upper mandible.

The thing's former face had been sloughed off and was hanging like a vestigial organ on the creature's chest. Seras recognized the twisted features as belonging to William Birkin, Sheri's father.

It leapt through the air and landed on its arms twenty yards in front of Seras. Slowly, it stood upright, its lower legs seeming to have trouble supporting it. _Still trying to walk like a man,_ Seras thought. _His brain hasn't quite caught up with his body._

Seras removed the M16 from her shoulder and set it to full-auto. A human wouldn't be able to control the weapon on such a setting, the muzzle jump would make the weapon impossible to aim for longer than a few bursts. With her strength, she felt confident that she could unload the entire thirty-round clip into the thing's brand new head.

It began lumbering forward with its arms outstretched in preparation for a massive, lethal bear hug. Seras opened fire, controlling the weapon with ease. All of her bullets plowed into the area of the monster's head, ripping it to shreds.

Feeling like an action movie hero, Seras watched the thing fall forward gracelessly onto its stomach, where it began to twitch. Seras opened her mouth to shout for Sheri but stopped as blood and bile began gushing out of the creature. _It's not dying,_ she thought, horrified as she quickly changed the M16's clip. _It's mutating. _

Long teeth sprouted from the creature's head area as the arms began to crack and fold into different positions. Seras stood in shock as the thing mutated into a four legged creature with a large ring of sword-like teeth surrounding a gaping hole ringed with even smaller teeth.

She was now facing a mouth on legs. It no longer had a head that she could see, and she feared that its vital organs might be buried by layers of protective tissue. It charged forward, loping along just like a dog trailing blood and viscous ooze from its wounds as it went. Seras leapt to the side, farther than any human could manage from a standing position, avoiding its charge. It slammed into the corridor entrance hard and turned to come after her again.

She emptied another clip into its mouth, hoping she might hit something it needed to live. Blood came gushing from the wounds, but the creature paid them no mind. It simply didn't care if it was shot anymore. Seras ran and the thing followed. She rounded a corner behind the tanks and heard the thing leap atop them like a cat after a mousse.

If the M16 didn't have an effect, she knew none of her other guns would. Using them would be a complete waste and even if they did work, she would be out of bullets by the time she was done.

The thing attempted to leap down on top of her, but she avoided it. She was now in a narrow corridor with the wall to one side and the tanks to the other. It had no way of moving either left or right, which gave Seras an idea. She backed up quickly and removed the bandolier that contained her ten grenades. There was a string than enable the pins on all of them to be pulled at once. Seras yanked it, arming all ten grenades. She had about three seconds to toss them before they exploded.

It rushed forward as fast as it could in the confines of the tanks and wall. Its mouth was open wide, trying to catch her in its teeth and pull her in. Seras tossed the bandolier into the bloody mouth which devoured it greedily. Seras was clamoring up the side of the tanks as fast as she could when they exploded.

The force of the explosion and the shower of blood, meat, and teeth knocked her off the tanks and to the floor. Her guns and ammo dug into her body, making the fall quite painful but otherwise harmless. When she stood and brushed the gunk off of her filthy uniform, she saw that the creature had shriveled up and was oozing. Maybe it was dead and maybe it wasn't, either way it wasn't a problem anymore.

Seras walked around the other side of the tanks rather than step past what was left of William Birkin. Something about how the beast mutated so quickly and easily made Seras wonder if it was truly dead. She didn't have anything on her that could burn or liquefy it, so there was little she could do but go to Sheri and see if she was alright.

She found the girl crouched by the rubble and hugging her knees tight to her chest. Sheri looked up at Seras with a mixture of fear and loathing, but Seras thought the girl was glad to see that she had won all the same. "It's over, love," Seras said. "We can go now."

"Is my daddy dead too?" Sheri asked, resting her chin on her knees.

"I think he stopped being you da' when he was infected," Seras said. The thought of how William Birkin became what he was made Annette's memories bubble up. When Umbrella agents entered the lab to retrieve a sample of the G-virus before the planned outbreak, he had injected himself with it after being shot.

Another memory, courtesy of Annette, leapt to the front of Seras' mind. The pendant Sheri had been wearing around her neck the entire time; it contained a sample of the G-virus, hidden behind a family photo. "Sheri, can I see your locket?"

"No," Sheri said. "It's mine." She clutched the small pendant in her fist and turned her head away from Seras.

"Well…then could you look inside it and see if there's anything behind the picture inside?"

Sheri eyed Seras suspiciously, but opened the locket. She took a long look at the picture inside and for a moment, Seras thought the girl might cry. _Who wouldn't?_ Seras thought, feeling evil for making the girl look at the images of her dead parents. Sheri didn't cry, instead she began picking at the photo. It opened up, revealing that there was a small compartment behind it. Sheri held up a tiny vial containing a purple liquid.

Seras' heart jumped; she didn't know how contagious the virus was. She thought hard, the fact being buried deep within a garble of specialized scientific knowledge she didn't understand. The answer was that the virus wasn't airborne. It needed to enter the system of the organism by some other means; ingested or injected…or perhaps through a minor cut, which Sheri had in spades.

"Could I carry that, Sheri?" Seras said, kneeling. "It's the virus that got your dad. If it gets dropped and broken, I'm afraid of what might happen."

Sheri didn't seem to be as sentimental about the virus as she was about the locket. She handed it over and seemed glad to be rid of it. Nor did she ask about how it got in her locket. _What kind of person would saddle their child with such a thing?_ Seras thought. She suspected that a few minutes of scanning Annette's memories would show that the Birkins weren't the most capable parents.

"We have to go," Seras said, extending her hand. Sheri took it and stood. "It looks like we'll have to find another way out of town."

"Can we get something to eat?" Sheri asked. "I also have to go to the bathroom."

_"Problems for a human," _she could hear Alucard saying. _"But not for you."_ "We'll find a bathroom down here, and then maybe some food when we get to the surface," Seras said. "But safety is our number one concern…got it?"

Sheri was silent as they walked back through the tank room. Seras could hear the girl's father sill twitching and belching ooze out of multiple wounds. _Not quite as dead as I'd like,_ she thought.

**To be continued…**


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen:**

Their back trail was littered with zombies who had heard the commotion she had made on her way in. All of them were large males with no clothes who appeared to have been skinned at some point. Their skinless, grinning faces with their wide, dead eyes made for a horrid sight as they stalked forward with their arms outstretched.

Seras had told Sheri not to look at them while she put bullets in their heads. Only one got close enough to make a hard kick to the chest necessary. Seras shot it as it fell and was thankful that she had a plentiful amount of weapons on her. The crossbow and revolver she had been carrying would not have been enough to keep her out of hand-to-hand combat, something she detested against these virus infested things.

The downside to using Annette's memories to find her way through the lab was that she had to relive the experiences Annette had in creating them. That meant feeling what she felt, noticing what she noticed and in some cases, thinking what she thought.

Annette Birkin had been a horrible woman, but not entirely inhuman. Her husbands career had always come first, followed by her own; after that, her daughter. She saw the Birkin family as a single unit with the one goal of furthering William's…career? Reputation? The ultimate goal was fuzzy, but it was clear that the woman's priorities were skewed.

She had loved them both in her own twisted way. Along with being horrified at what William had become, she had been in awe of him. He had literally become his research. Annette had been saddened by the circumstances of his transformation more so than the change itself. It would have been a joy to study him, perhaps even have him answer questions about himself once, and if, he became sentient again.

Sheri was an afterthought to all of this. The money from the grant would pay for her schooling and she would grow to be a scientist like them and carry on their legacy. Maternal affection was a part of Annette's feelings, but it was mostly buried by cold logic.

Seras could only pity the little orphan. Her own parents had been killed…her mother's corpse violated by their attackers while she had watched from the floor, a bullet having grazed her head. As horrible as that was, Seras wondered if Sheri didn't have it worse. Her parents had never loved her the way they should, and now would never have the chance.

The door to the elevator that had brought them down was lying on the floor while the shaft was empty. Seras guessed that William had come down the shaft after them, destroying it in the process. She looked up and figured she could climb it, even with Sheri on her back. The door at the top had likely suffered the same fate as the one at the bottom; she wouldn't have to try and pry it open mid-shaft with a girl and an armory on her back.

It took a little sweet-talking to get Sheri to agree, but soon the girl had a death-grip around Seras' thin waist as she climbed the shaft. The strength and stamina within her dead limbs made the climb easy and soon they were both back up near the loading platform. Seras was surprised to see that the giant lift that had been parked there before was now gone, leaving a gaping hole descending back down into the lab.

"I wonder why it's gone?" Seras said, vainly hoping to open a dialogue with Sheri. "Do you think someone else rode it down, or was it automatic?"

Sheri responded with a noise and a shrug; apparently not having much to say to the vampire that had drank the blood from her mother's corpse. Seras sighed and wondered how bad the police station would be upon their return. When they left, it had already been crawling with zombies and mutants; the situation could only have gotten worse.

Seras' eye drifted over to a large bin on the other side of the big lift. It was a garbage chute, used to dump biological waste trucked up from the lab bellow. Or so Annette had been told while being given a tour of the facility. Annette had wondered if the waste was incinerated and had been told that it was.

Annette had filed the fact away in her mind and had checked on it later when Umbrella proved to be a difficult company to work for. The work they had been doing was highly illegal in nearly every country, and Annette had correctly assumed that working for Umbrella was not unlike working for a criminal organization.

She had done some digging on her own and found out where Umbrella threw its trash. Some of it was burned, but a great deal of it was sent to an abandoned factory inside Raccoon City where it was held in cesspools. The factory connected to the sewer system and, Seras assumed with the help of Annette, was to further aid the spreading of the disease.

"What is it?" Sheri asked, surprising Seras a little by breaking her silence.

Seras shook her head. "Nothing…I mean, I'm not sure." Which was true. While the factory wasn't much safer than the police station, and likely more dangerous, it was closer to the edge of town.

"Aren't we going back to the station?" Sheri asked.

"No," Seras said, making her decision. "I think I know a better way."

Seras had banked on the fact that she would have smelled flames if the chute had been for burning things. She had guessed right, but hadn't counted on how much speed they would pick up sliding down it.

Seras tried spreading her legs to slow their descent, but the chute was too wide. Instead, she planted them flat and used the soles of her boots to keep their speed down. Even with that, her rear end was warm when she and Sheri flopped onto the floor of a holding chamber.

Seras and Sheri picked themselves up and both were thankful that the trash had been taking out recently. Landing in a pile of discarded corpses and God only knew what else, would not have been pleasant.

Annette had never been to the factory, and thus, was no help to Seras. _At least I won't have to poke around in that awful woman's mind anymore,_ she thought. _I wonder if she'll be stuck inside me forever? I'll have to ask my master when I see him._

The room they were in was covered in grime and smelled like rotten meat. Seras became worried about the possibility of infection as she opened the filthy door that led into a wide hallway with a large set of stairs at the end next to a freight elevator. Seras wasn't concerned about the mutagenetic viruses infected them; her main worry was that Sheri might catch a normal infection. She was covered in scrapes and cuts from running around in the police station and lab and the places she had been were filthy beyond belief.

"Do you still need to use the lavatory?" Seras asked.

Sheri nodded. They hadn't found a bathroom in the laboratory that wasn't blocked off by zombies. She had an enormous amount of bullets, but didn't want to waste them clearing the way for a bathroom break. _Waste not, want not,_ she had thought to herself. "I'm hungry and tired too," Sheri said.

Seras sighed. The influx of blood she had received had filled her with energy. It was easy to forget what it must be like for a young girl running from monsters all night long. She looked both ways down the hall and listened for sounds. The power was on in the factory and her ears couldn't sort out the difference between machinery and what might be footsteps. "I'll wait out in the hall. Just pee in the corner of that room."

"No," Sheri said. "That's gross."

"I know, that whole room is filthy, but I don't know where any bathrooms are and right now, this place is safe. Just go, real quick."

"Close the door," Sheri said.

Seras stepped out into the hall and shut the door behind her. If her father somehow managed to follow them down the chute, or if Sheri suddenly decided that she would try and lock Seras out to get rid of her, she could rip the door off its hinges.

Sheri finished and came out, looking embarrassed. Seras led her towards the stairway, thinking that she had nothing to be ashamed of, really. _I'm surprised she didn't pee herself when her mother was killed…I almost did._

They went up the stairs and found themselves in a room containing one of the disposal pools. The room was large and square with nearly three quarters of it taken up by the pool. Surrounding it was a walkway leading towards a door in front of them and a control panel off to their right. The smell that permeated the room made Seras decide to stop breathing and Sheri begin to gag.

"Are you okay?" Seras asked, drawing in breath to speak and regretting it. She was used to the smell of dead flesh, but this was a new level altogether. The cesspool was filled with bloated corpses, not all of them complete and not all of them human. Sheri bent over as if to vomit, but pulled her shirt up above her mouth and nose.

The stink from the pool as they made their way towards the door distracted Seras enough so that she didn't realize something was swimming in it until it leapt out of the water and landed in front of her.

At first Seras thought it might be a licker but quickly noticed the insect-like limbs and wide, fanged mouth. It skittered forward and stood up on its back legs when it got close. Seras quickly drew her magnum from around her back as the thing attempted to grab her with its free limbs and mouth. She pumped three shots into the thing's face, obliterating it and sending chunks of green ooze flying backward.

It fell backward, curling up like a dying spider. Seras heard the thump of two more land on the walkway behind her. Sheri was already running towards the door when Seras turned. More of the bug creatures were running towards her, dripping with filthy water from the cesspool. She fired, one shot per creature, and sent them both sprawling. She gave each creature one more bullet as three more came crawling up out of the pool near the water control panel.

She followed Sheri through the door and shut it behind her, locking it out of habit. "Sheri, wait!" Seras shouted as the girl kept on running. "Slow down!"

Sheri either didn't hear, or didn't care to obey. She ran down a dark hall and rounded a corner. Seras ran faster while trying to put a new clip into the magnum. "Sheri!"

**To be continued…**


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen.**

She kept shouting for the girl to stop with no effect. The creatures she had locked in the room behind her were attempting to make their way through the door, and Seras knew there was likely to be more danger up ahead where Sheri was running.

She risked a look back before rounding the corner at the top of a short flight of stairs to see if the creatures might break through the door. It shuddered once in its frame, making Seras wish she had saved a grenade. Sheri screamed, spurring Seras forward.

Sheri had run down a long corridor and come face to face with two zombies. Both were men wearing filthy blue uniforms, likely factory workers. Both lunged at Sheri, but the girl ducked between their clumsy gropes and kept running past them.

She shot them both with a Beretta, not wanting to waste magnum rounds on zombies. They fell as Sheri pushed through the door behind them. "Sheri! Come back!" Seras shouted, running as fast as she could down the hall, the mass of weapons on her back clattering uncomfortably.

Seras caught up with Sheri in a large office dominated by a large table littered with papers and snack food. Sheri had to slow down to go around the desk and that was when Seras caught her by the back of the shirt. She squirmed in Seras' grip, but quit struggling quickly. "Sheri, what are you thinking?" Seras said, shaking her a little. "You could've been killed!"

Sheri pouted and looked at the floor. Seras thought she might mutter an apology, but she remained silent. _I should yell at her or something,_ Seras thought. She wondered what Sheri's mother might say, and drew a blank. Annette hadn't been around enough to punish Sheri, and Sheri had never been the type to need it.

"Don't run off again," Seras said. "We're stuck with each other until we can escape. Once that's done, you'll never have to see me again."

Sheri remained silent, but showed no sign of wanting to run again. _This whole thing is bad enough and now it had to be awkward too…I should've just eaten that awful police chief when I had the chance, _Seras thought.

Seras gave the papers on the desk a brief looking over. They seemed to be technical reports and memos concerning water flow and personnel transfers; nothing worth sticking in her pocket that would be incriminating.

Keeping a Beretta handy in her belt in case they ran into more zombies, Seras readied her shotgun. She still had the rifle and the M16, but she thought the shotgun would serve her better in the narrow corridors of the factory where her enemies would likely be close together.

"We're going through that door," Seras said to Sheri. "Stay behind me, no more than a few steps. Don't run unless I tell you to." She gave the marching orders in flat, authoritative tone that she hoped would let Sheri know she was serious.

They continued through the factory; the dull light bulbs being the only source of light, as it was still dark outside. Seras was again glad to have a vampire's vision and keen hearing. According to her ears, the creatures she had left behind in the cesspool room had not made it through the door to follow them.

Creeping through the factory, heading downward whenever possible, they didn't run into anything Seras felt the need to shoot at. As they descended a flight of stairs that led into a large room with a loading door to the outside, Seras heard something suspicious.

There were footsteps thumping softly on what sounded like a metal walkway outside. They were the even steps of a sure-footed human, not the sloppy shuffling of a zombie or the skittering clatter of a mutant with claws.

Seras wasn't taking any chances. She raised the shotgun and aimed it at the door. With the light being as poor as it was, she would have the drop on whoever came through the door; she could decide whether they were friend or foe after they put down their weapon, if they had one.

There was a loud thud from outside, followed by a gasp of terror. Seras thought something might have fallen on the walkway outside, or something on it had broken; it was hard to tell what was outside by sound alone.

When heavy footsteps began falling, and a gun began firing, Seras pushed Sheri towards the corner behind her. "Stay over there," she said sternly. Sheri obeyed as a deep, guttural voice from outside muttered "Stars…"

_Stars? What the bloody hell is going on out there?_ She yanked the door open, holding her shotgun in one hand and saw what was happening outside.

A woman in a blue, shoulderless shirt was firing a gun at an enormous humanoid creature dressed in leather overalls. The woman was firing like a pro; using both hands and putting the bullets into the thing's head. Despite taking hard shots to the face, the thing kept walking forward, not feeling the damage.

Seras gave it a load of shot to the back of the head, sending blood and skin flying. It kept walking forward along the catwalk that was stretched above a crevice filled with putrid water. She fired again, achieving similar results.

The woman in the blue shirt and black skirt kept firing until her gun clicked empty. Seras fired at the back of the thing's knee, making it stumble slightly. It turned, temporarily distracted from its target to look at her.

Its head was bald, grey, and covered with stitches and fresh bullet wounds. The thing had no lips, giving it a permanent snarl. Although one of its eyes was small and beady and the other covered with a patch, she could feel the thing looking at her intently. Seras thought it might come after her now, but instead it turned back muttering "Stars…"

Seras dropped the shotgun and ran forward as the woman it was pursuing searched a fanny pack she was wearing frantically for more bullets. Seras stood to the side of the creature and gave it a hard shove, sending it toppling over the catwalk's railing.

The thing fell with an annoyed snarl and splashed into the murky water bellow. The woman had found another clip and reloaded. She was still holding it as though ready to point it at Seras, but held off. "Who are you?" she asked.

Seras peered over the side of the catwalk to see where the creature had fallen. All she could see was a black pool of water, still rippling from the thing's fall. "My name is Seras," she said. "What was that thing?"

"Something Umbrella cooked up to kill S.T.A.R.S members," the woman said, walking over to the catwalk's edge and looking down as well. "My name is Jill, by the way."

_Oh, so now I find her,_ Seras thought. "Jill Valentine of S.T.A.R.S?" Seras said.

Jill nodded. "Yes…how did you know my last name?"

"I was sent to find you," Seras said. "I'm from a section of the British government investigating Umbrella. We had heard your story about what happened in the mountains."

Jill looked Seras up and down, clearly a bit surprised at the tattered state of her appearance and the amount of heat she was packing. "You look like you've got a story to tell," Jill said. "We can compare notes later, once we've escaped."

Seras nodded and looked at Jill's gun. "Is that a nine millimeter? How are you set for bullets?"

"I could use a few," Jill said, still taking a visual inventory of Seras' armaments. Seras removed a handful of bullets from her pouch and handed them over to Jill, who began putting them into the clip she had ejected in the fight with the creature. "Where did you get all of that?"

"Umbrella's armory," Seras said. "I met up with a researcher who led me…" Seras remembered that Sheri was still in the factory. "Sheri," Seras said, running back to the factory with Jill following.

Seras entered and looked to the corner she had left Sheri in. The girl was nowhere in sight. "Bloody hell!" Seras shouted. "She ran off!"

"Who? Who ran off?" Jill asked.

"Sheri Birkin," Seras said, scanning the large room and straining her ears. "She's the daughter of the couple who are responsible for the G-virus…I left her in the corner while I came out to help you."

"I don't see her," Jill said, looking around. "Why would she run off?"

_I'll just keep that bit to myself for as long as I can,_ Seras thought. Having Sheri know she was a vampire from Hellsing was bad enough. Having American police know, would be even worse. "She's twelve, but she's got a independent streak," Seras said. "I'm going to go look for her."

"I'll help you," Jill said. "If we split up…"

"No," Seras said. "This place is crawling with zombies and mutants."

Jill looked dismayed as she glanced around the factories ceiling. "The entire city is the same way. It's like a war zone."

Seras handed off the M16 along with its ammo to Jill. "This was getting heavy," she lied. "You take it."

Jill took the weapon and followed Seras towards a door to their right. Seras didn't think Sheri would head back the way they had come, not with the bug-like creatures being back there. Still, the girl had been stupid to run off and it angered Seras that Sheri seemed to want to take her chances alone against the other monsters rather than with her. _Am I that bad?_ She thought. _Her mother was already dead when I drank her blood, it was Umbrella's pets that did the killing._

Logically, she knew Sheri's disdain was understandable, even if it wasn't Seras' fault. She also knew that if the lickers had wounded her and not Annette, she might have torn the living blood right out of the woman's veins…or worse, Sheri's, to make up for the blood loss.

"You haven't seen any other survivors, have you?" Jill asked.

"No, just the girl. You?"

Jill shook her head as they walked, neither daring to call Sheri's name for fear of attracting the wrong sort of attention. "I heard a radio transmission at the police station from someone…they sounded like professionals but I couldn't tell if they were police or military. I went looking for the source, but the streets got so bad I had to run here. That and that creature had been chasing me the entire time."

"It's after you because you're from S.T.A.R.S?" Seras asked.

"It seems so. I guess Umbrella has it out for us after what happened in the mountains."

The two women had much to discuss. Seras tried to keep her mind both on what Jill was saying and thinking about where Sheri might have run off to. Justified or not, she thought she might give the girl a good smack when she saw her. _Maybe another human will put her at ease._

Seras briefly entertained the idea of ditching both Jill and Sheri once she had them together. She could leave Jill with enough weaponry to see her to someplace safe, while she beat it out of town on her own. With no humans to look after, her vampire abilities would be more than match for anything that got in her way.

_But that's not what I'm going to do, as easy as it would be._

**To be continued…**


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter Sixteen.**

Seras had insisted on walking in front of Jill, claiming she knew slightly more about the factory's layout, having been inside it and seen a map. There had been no map, but Seras still felt the need to protect her human companion.

Seras had asked Jill about the creature that had been attacking her earlier. Jill related at a whisper and in greater detail, her ordeals since the zombie outbreak began, including her own plans for escape.

"It was either here or the clock tower," Jill said. "I tried for the tower, but things pushed me in this direction instead."

"I was hoping we could leave town from here," Seras said, keeping her ears trained for Sheri's footsteps. "I thought the factory was close to the edge of the city and we could walk out safely."

Seras stopped in front of a steel door and put her hear up to it. Hearing nothing, she adjusted the magnum in her right hand and opened the door with her left, keeping the gun's barrel pointed into the dimly lit room beyond.

It was a room with a cheap wooden table in the center with walls lined with machinery. Located at the far end to Seras' left was a hallway that she couldn't see the end of and couldn't guess how long it was.

"I don't think that plan will work," Jill said once they had confirmed that the room was empty. "The virus infected nearly every living thing in the city and the area around it. Even the cockroaches are dangerous."

"Do you have any other idea on how to escape? If walking out through the wilderness is a bad idea then…" Seras asked.

They entered the room and began looking around. "I had been playing it by ear until that thing began chasing me. Since then, I've just been trying to stay one step ahead of it," Jill said.

"Why the clock tower?" Seras asked. "That's practically in the middle of town."

"I know," Jill said. "It's a long story, but I think Umbrella is using it as an extraction point for some of its agents. I found a memo."

"So you want to get to the clock tower and highjack their helicopter?" Seras said, looking down the hallway and seeing that it was short and led to a thick, brown door with a card reader above the handle. "Sounds like a long shot."

"There's no good way out of town," Jill said. "Either way, we have to fight our way past mutants and zombies. I'm also sure that thing out there is still after me."

The door turned out to be locked. Seras sighed, thinking she was going to have to search for the card that opened it, but then realized that Sheri couldn't have gotten through either. "She couldn't have gone this way, then," Seras said. "The way we came was swarming with monsters, so…"

Jill scratched her head and scanned the room. "You said she was twelve…small girl?"

Seras nodded. "Yes, she's a scrawny little thing. Quick too. She had been running around the police station for some time before I caught up with her." Sheri had been quite good at running; something Seras, until recently, had thought was an asset.

"Look, over there," Jill said, pointing to a ventilation shaft on the other side of the room. Seras looked and saw that the vent cover wasn't bolted in. How Sheri had removed the bolts, Seras didn't know, but she hadn't been able to put them back in or get the vent cover to stick properly from inside the shaft. "She must have crawled in there."

Seras opened the cover and looked in. The shaft went straight for ten feet before it teed off to the left and right. "Sheri!" she shouted down the vent, no longer concerned about attracting monsters. "Sheri, are you there?"

She listened down the shaft and thought she heard shuffling; the kind a little girl would make on her hands and knees. When she got no reply, she also realized that she couldn't fit down the shaft with all of the gear she was carrying. Even without it, it would be a tight fit.

"Bloody hell," Seras muttered. "I'm going to have to crawl through, but without all of this stuff." She began piling her weapons onto the table along with her packs. She kept a Beretta with an extra clip tucked into her belt and turned to Jill. "Will you wait here while I try to go and get her?"

Jill nodded. "I'll watch your back."

"If that thing comes, just run. Don't try and fight it by yourself, just grab what you need and go."

Jill gave a non-committal shrug and gestured for Seras to get crawling through the vent with the muzzle of her M16. The shaft only allowed Seras about four inches of wiggle room on either shoulder. There would be no way she could turn around mid-shaft if she needed to. _I might have to drag the girl out by her ankles,_ Seras thought, crawling down the shaft.

Seras would crawl forward ten or so feet, stop, listen, and begin again when she thought she heard Sheri. Hearing the girl wasn't a problem, pinpointing the direction the sounds were coming from was. The ventilation shaft intersected many other shafts and had several left and right turns.

_I'm going to get lost, _Seras thought as she crawled over a vent cover, being careful not to fall down into the room bellow. When she came to another vent cover, she looked down into the room beneath her and saw a dozen or so zombies dressed in blue uniforms huddled over the corpse of another. They were chewing on the body, not caring what part so long as there was meat. Seras was glad she no longer needed blood, despite what the meal had cost her.

One of the zombies looked up at her as she went over the shaft, but diverted its attention back down to its food. Seras kept crawling, hoping she would find Sheri before she got too far into the maze of ventilation shafts.

She took a right turn, sucking in her stomach to squeeze around, and saw Sheri's feet. The girl's head poked up over her legs and her wide eyes looked at Seras. She gasped and sped forward on her hands and knees. "Sheri, stop!" Seras shouted, moving forward as fast as her limited movements could carry her.

Sheri kept crawling; as Seras passed a vent intersection, she looked down the shaft and saw that it was blocked. When the blockage began to move, Seras' mouth hung open in revulsion. The large, black, squiggling mass crawling forward seemed to be made of many smaller life forms. _Leeches,_ Seras thought with disgust. _God, I hate leeches._

Not wasting time wondering why there were killer leeches in the ventilation shaft, Seras kept crawling forward; her desire to not be caught by the leeches blending with her desire to get Sheri back.

"Sheri!" Seras shouted. "Get out of the vent; it's not safe!"

"Go away!" Sheri screamed, putting distance between herself and Seras. Suddenly, there was a pop and the sound of metal being struck. Sheri disappeared from the shaft, having fallen through a vent cover beneath her.

Seras made it to the spot where Sheri had fallen and looked down. Sheri was lying on her back with her hands over her stomach, her face scrunched up in pain from having the wind knocked out of her. _Serves her right,_ Seras thought angrily, slipping through the shaft and hoping she didn't land on Sheri.

Her attempt to slide forward through the vent cover on her stomach, rotate through the air and land on her feet failed; instead, she landed hard on her rear next to Sheri. A purple, fat leech landed on her shoulder. She brushed it off, grabbed Sheri and dragged her to her feet. More leeches came pouring down as Seras made her way to the door and out of the room.

Sheri wasn't struggling; she allowed her self to be dragged by the arm through the door of the supply closet and into a narrow, unlit hallway. Seras cast a glance back into the supply closet; leeches were pouring from the vent and piling on the floor. A large clump of them slowly began to dangle from the vent like a piece of condensation.

The dripping lump began to take shape as it slid to the floor. It narrowed at one end and seemed to sprout two appendages from either side, giving it the shape of a human torso. It plopped onto the pile of leeches on the floor, sending leeches scattering outward and revealing a pair of naked, human, legs.

_It's a man covered in leeches,_ Seras thought, slamming the door on the disgusting creature. "Come on," Seras snapped, grabbing Sheri and running down the hallway, wondering how she was going to get back to the room Jill was in with only a Beretta.

**To be continued…**


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter Seventeen.**

She hoped the door would be enough to slow down the leech man as she dragged Sheri down the corridor by the arm. The girl was running alongside Seras and not trying to escape, but she didn't want to take anymore chances.

"Why did you run?" Seras asked, kicking open a door and holding her gun up while she kept her grip on Sheri. "You could've been killed."

Sheri didn't respond. The room Seras entered was empty of zombies or mutants but contained a corpse slumped over in a chair in front of a row of monitors. The corpse was that of a man wearing one of the blue uniforms she had seen the other factory zombies in. On the floor was a large, empty, bottle of aspirin.

Ignoring him, she took a look at the security monitors. The factory was under emergency power, but the screens were still working; she scanned the wall of monitors and tried to find Jill.

She recognized the room she had left Jill in; the shotgun and two fanny packs were lying on the table, but none of the other weapons were present; neither was Jill.

Her eyes flicked over the screens showing movement. Most were tracking zombies or mutants, but one was following Jill as she ran, the weapons she had taken from Seras jostling on her back.

The reason for her haste soon became apparent. Trudging down one of the hallways was the creature they had battled outside. It had entered a large, rectangular room with large boxes piled in the corners. Two of the bug-like creatures that had gone after her and Sheri in the cesspool room reared up to attack the creature. It swatted them aside, crushing their exoskeletons and splattering them against the walls.

_Looks like not everyone is playing on the same team,_ Seras thought. "Come on," Seras said. "We need to try and meet up with that woman. Her name is Jill."

Again, Sheri didn't respond and allowed herself to be pulled along by the arm. Seras made her way quickly through the building, keeping an eye out for the insect creatures and hoping that the leech man wasn't coming up fast on their back trail.

She avoided zombies when she could, running through rooms past them if they were on the other side of a table or busy eating. When one got between her and her path, she opted for a hard kick to the chest; her strength was enough to send them sprawling, giving her and Sheri enough time to run past it.

The halls and rooms slowly began looking familiar. When they reached the large room Sheri had originally run off in, she stopped and listened for gunshots. "We'll go back to the room you crawled off into the vents in, and take what Jill left of the weapons. After that, we're leaving this place."

"What about Jill?" Sheri asked as she was led through the door on the far end towards the room the chase through the ventilation shafts had started.

_Leaving her would be bloody rotten, _Seras conceded to herself. _Still, I've got to look after this girl and that thing chasing her is only going to make things worse._ "She can look after herself," Seras said. "She's got enough guns…we're the ones who have to worry."

Seras felt slightly safer once she had the shotgun and the ammo packs. Still, she was nowhere near as well armed as she had been before. She wanted to blame Sheri for all the trouble she had been through in the past fifteen or so minutes, but the knowledge that she was filled with the blood of the girl's mother made it hard to hold a grudge. _I guess it was only a matter of time before I ate someone,_ she thought. _I wasn't supposed to fight anything out here anyway._

"We've got a decision to make," Seras said, hoping to gain some of Sheri's trust back by involving her with the planning. "Jill told me that the factory isn't as close to the edge of town as we thought and that the woods around the town is filled with horrid monsters of all sorts. To get out, we'd have to try and run past them."

"More monsters," Sheri said softly. "I don't like monsters."

_You don't like me, that's for sure._ "We could also try for the clock tower at the center of town. There might be a helicopter coming to pick some people up."

Sheri squinted as Seras and raised an eyebrow. "Might be?"

_Clever girl._ "Right…Jill found a memo saying it would be by to pick up some people who work for Umbrella. But judging how Umbrella acts, it's not a sure thing. Plus there wasn't much word on when the helicopter would be showing up." Seras bit her lip, the truth sounding more horrible when it was vocalized.

Sheri began rocking on her heels and twiddling her fingers. Both ideas were equally terrible and Seras wondered why she had bothered to ask a twelve year old girl. Even a military tactician might have had to flip a coin.

"What do you have for money?" Seras asked. "Can I borrow a…quarter is it?"

With a suspicious look on her face, Sheri reached into her pocket and handed Seras a quarter. "Heads we walk through the woods and try to find a main road, tails we make for the clock tower." She flipped the coin into the air and watched it spin. Catching it in her palm, she slapped it into the back of her wrist and looked. "Tails. Cock tower."

Sheri nodded slowly, not caring which route to certain death she took. "I-I think I know the way," she said.

"Good, I've only been there once." Seras had gone past it while giving herself a tour of the town when she had first arrived. The tower had been lit up like a beacon during the night she had visited. Hopefully it would still be recognizable with the power out and fires all over town.

They moved quickly back to where Jill had entered the building. Seras wondered where she had run off to if the door had been locked, preventing access to the rest of the factory. _I'll have to ask Jill about it if I catch up with her again,_ Seras thought, opening the large doors out onto the catwalk. She had decided to keep the Beretta in her belt and have the shotgun at the ready. She planned on kicking or walking past any zombies she met. Other creatures would require a dose of something larger than the Beretta.

The factory was adjacent to the Raccoon City Park, making it nowhere near as close to the edge of town as Seras had been led to believe from Annette's memories. That fact made the clock tower bid seem like the smarter move, with it being closer to the center of town than the edge. _I can't believe they had a place like that so close to a public area,_ Seras thought as she led Sheri down a dirt path through a thin grove of trees and hedges. The streetlights that normally kept the path lit were dead, making Seras feel sorry for Sheri. Seras kept an eye on the bushes, figuring that if anything were lying in wait, the thick shrubbery was the perfect place to lay an ambush. _Jill got through here alive with just a nine millimeter. Either she's a super-human too, or we might be alright…at least through the park._

Growling made Seras stop in her tracks and Sheri cling to her hip. Thankful the girl wasn't running off in a panic, Seras tried to pinpoint the growl. _It sounded like a dog,_ she thought. She hoped it was a normal dog, simply frightened by the recent turn of events. When it plodded out into the foot path in front of them, she saw that it wasn't a normal dog at all.

It smelled like rotten meat and looked as though it had been chewed on in several places. Sheri whimpered as Seras hooked the shotgun under her left arm and drew the Beretta with her right. As she took aim, the two dogs that had been hiding in the bushes next to them made their move.

Seras fired, killing the dog in front as the one on her left bit into her leg. She heard Sheri scream and the sound of the dogs snarling as the one on her leg began shaking its head, tearing at her flesh. She shot the dog chewing at her, not worrying about the bullet going stray and hitting her; she'd live. It yelped one final time as the bullet destroyed its brain, causing it to fall to the ground in a lifeless heap.

Sheri was still screaming as the other dog mauled her leg. Seras dropped both of her weapons and grabbed the dog by the jaw with both hands and pulled. The dog's mouth opened with little effort and continued to open until Seras its lower jaw in her hand, separate from the rest of the head.

The dog didn't seem to notice that its head had been torn in two. It kept trying to bite her with its upper teeth until Seras shoved its head into the ground, pulping the skull. Once the dog was dead, Seras dragged Sheri away from the bloody corpses and looked over her leg wound. It was deep and bleeding. Seras kicked herself for not looking for some kind of first aid kit when she was in Umbrella's armory.

"W-what bit me?" Sheri stammered, tears running down her face.

"Some dogs," Seras said, remembering Sheri couldn't see in the dark. "It'll be alright. I'll find you some bandages and clean the wound."

Seras tore a sleeve from her uniform and tied it around Sheri's leg. To her credit, Sheri stopped crying after the make-shift bandage was in place. She still had a sob or two left, but at least she wouldn't make much noise and attract more danger.

Seras picked up her weapons and cradled Sheri in her arms. "I might have to let you down quick if we're attacked again," she said. "Just get behind me when that happens. Do your best to ignore your leg."

Sheri nodded and allowed herself to be carried. As they strode through the park, Seras paid extra attention to her surroundings. _I shouldn't have been ambushed like that. Stupid. _Her mistake might have cost Sheri her life, an idea she couldn't get out of her head; things had been much easier when she was alone.

While she went over basic wound dressing in her head, for when she got the supplies to give Sheri a proper bandage, an awful thought entered her mind. _Those dogs were infected…anyone who gets bitten by a zombie, gets infected too…within the hour._ That was how the disease had overtaken the town. An animal had bitten someone, that person then bit someone else. Suddenly there were two zombies, which became four, then eight, then sixteen, and so on. Before anyone was ready to use drastic measures on the infected, their numbers were too great.

Seras looked down at Sheri and wondered if she would be able to kill the girl when she turned. Maybe she should do it now. _And what if that wasn't enough to infect her? Maybe the disease ran out of steam or something?_

Seras began running through the park, past what must have been at least a dozen zombies lurking off the beaten path and some that had been lurking on it. Soon, she was in front of a small brick structure, likely a caretaker's hut.

_Maybe there's a kit in there,_ Seras thought. _Or maybe there's a nice comfy bed she can lie on…and wait._

**To be continued…**


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter Eighteen.**

Seras let Sheri down in front of the door to the shack and tested the lock. The door swung inward easily with a slight creak and Seras was pleased she didn't have to break down the door or otherwise break the lock.

With Sheri back in her arms they entered the caretaker's hut. Seras' night vision spotted no zombies or mutated animals in the cluttered, oily smelling room. There was a table near a window with an unlit oil lamp set on it, but nothing she wanted to set Sheri down on.

There was a fireplace on one end of the room and a tiny broom closet on the other. Seras had to settle for setting Sheri down on a musty green couch. "How are you feeling?" she asked.

"My leg hurts," Sheri said. "I hate this place."

"I hate it too, love," Seras said, looking around for a match. She found a small box near the lamp and lit it before bringing it over to Sheri so the girl could have some light. "We'll be out of here soon, one way or another."

Sheri moaned softly and closed her eyes. Seras decided she needed to learn to lie better. _If they bomb this place, we won't even be carted off in body bags,_ she thought. _They'll probably nuke the place and blame terrorists or a reactor or something._

Seras gave the room a thorough, police-grade, searching but found no first aid kit. She didn't even find a clean rag to give Sheri a new bandage. She sat down in a chair and rested her chin in her palms. _Think, there has to be a way out of this. We need to get to that clock tower, but first I need to bandage her leg so it doesn't get infected, then I've got to pray she doesn't turn into a zombie. There are no bandages here, and traveling around aimlessly with her wounded in my arms is apt to get her killed for sure._

Her face slid into her hands and she suddenly felt like she wanted to cry. But no, police didn't cry. Neither did vampires or agents of Hellsing. She swallowed the ball of despair welling up in her throat and got to her feet. "Sheri, you're not going to like this," Seras said.

"Huh?" Sheri's head rolled towards Seras, her eyes wide with fear.

"I need to find you some bandages before we move on. I can't carry you while looking though, we'd be sitting ducks. I want you to hide in the broom closet and stay quiet while I…"

"What's behind there?" Sheri asked, pointing to the fireplace. Seras looked, thinking Sheri might try to run while she was distracted; a child's trick if there ever was one.

It took Seras a second to notice it, but once she did she wondered why she hadn't seen it before. _Must be because I'm so tall,_ she thought, embarrassed that the twelve year old had spotted something she hadn't.

The bricks in the fireplace were loose and crooked. The lamp light revealed the barest hint of space beyond the bricks. Seras' vampire eyes, when she squatted down a foot or so, could see that there was a room beyond the bricks. Seras walked over and kicked the bricks in. Peering through, she saw a room roughly have the size of the one they were in, only tidier.

She slipped in and let bafflement overtake her. There was a chalkboard with maps of the city pinned up all around it. Written on the board was what appeared to be tactical assault plans for the defense of buildings. The whole place reminded her of the RPD's briefing room. Were some of the cops still alive and using this place as a rally point?

The Umbrella logo on the radio in the corner said no. The place also looked like it had been used several times prior to the outbreak. It was makeshift, but there was nothing rushed about it. Umbrella operatives had been planning things in the room for possibly over a month.

Seras noticed three things: One was the door leading out of the room, two was the crank that would charge the radio's battery, and three was a large cot. Smiling, she went back to Sheri. "There's a little room back there, more comfy than this one. I'm going to move you in there, okay?"

Sheri nodded, letting herself be picked up and carried into the room beyond the fireplace. Seras set her down onto the cot and gave the room an decent search, looking for a first aid kit. Again, nothing.

Seras opened the door to see where it led; a small dirt path out behind the shack. The outside of the door was built in such a manner so that it appeared to be part of the wall. Seras shut it, thinking she would just block it off somehow in order to keep any Umbrella operatives from returning and finding Sheri. _I don't think any of them are coming back anyway,_ she thought.

The radio was the next thing she inspected. It already had a charge, saving her the trouble of winding it. She grabbed the microphone, pushed the button and spoke. "Hello, Is anyone out there? If you're alive, state your name and location."

She hadn't expected anyone to respond. When they did, Seras nearly dropped the microphone. "Who is this?" came a gruff voice with a Russian accent. "Identify yourself."

_This is the part where you don't tell them your real name, or the name of the secret vampire hunting organization you belong to,_ Seras thought as she pressed the talk button. "Jane Smith, RPD. Who am I speaking with?"

"Nikolai is my name. I'm part of the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Squad. We were sent here to clean up this mess."

_Lying bastard,_ Seras thought. _You're here to make sure everyone gets killed._ "Where are you?" she asked.

"Come to the clock tower at the center of town. We can't come and get you, we don't have enough men."

_More like you want me to die en route to the tower, and if that fails, you'll shoot me when I arrive._ "I'll try. Smith, over and out."

"They're not going to help us?" Sheri said, sitting up painfully.

"They want to kill us," Seras said. "I'm going to try and find you some bandages first. When we get to the clock tower, I'm going to have to hide you someplace again. There are bad men there and I need to get rid of them before I take you to the helicopter. I need you to be a brave girl and not run off anymore, okay?"

Sheri nodded, her leg all but ensuring her cooperation on that front. _She'll likely be dead within the hour…who am I trying to fool?_

With Sheri knocking on death's door and their only small hope of escape being the most dangerous route they could possible take, Seras used some tools from the caretaker's shed to nail the secret door shut. She left through the fireplace and did her best to restack some of the bricks.

"Sheri, if someone comes up on that radio, _don't_ tell them who you are and whatever you do, _do not_ let them know where you are. Got it?"

"Okay," Sheri said weakly.

As Seras left through the door she had come in, she felt hot bloody tears running down her cheeks. It was almost certain that by the time she returned with bandages for the girl's leg, there would be a twelve year old corpse milling about the room, searching for human flesh to chew on.

Still, she would return with bandages and a bullet. Whichever one she needed, she would use.

**To be continued…**


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter Nineteen.**

By herself, Seras little trouble making her way through the park. As she was running past zombies, her senses acutely aware of all that was transpiring around her, she realized what she had become. Drinking Annette's life blood had turned her into a full fledged vampire. A No Life Queen, as her master…no, Alucard, would call it.

She didn't think she was as powerful as Alucard. For one thing, she suspected she might still have to learn to control most of her powers. As of now, she was simply faster, stronger, and more aware than she had been before. Turning into mist or a bat might come later. Also, she suspected Alucard had been tampered with somehow. How, she didn't know and didn't have time to care.

She did have time to wonder if she was still bound to Alucard or Integra's orders. She had never felt any special compulsion to obey either of them, outside of the fact that she had no other choice. There weren't many job openings for dead police officers and besides, she believed in Hellsing's cause. Even if the spirit behind it might brand her as a target someday.

She kicked a zombie out of her way and decided that she was doing all of this because she wanted to do it. She had what amounted to super powers and the bad guys had just killed an entire city's worth of people. She wanted to be there when Alucard annihilated Umbrella's European HQ. She wanted to fire her cannon straight into a boardroom meeting filled with the people who had planned this nightmare and watch them burn and be ripped to pieces by shrapnel.

Running up to a short flight of concrete stairs, she ripped the hand rail out, giving herself a three foot long metal pipe. She continued forward at a jog, taking out her frustration and sadness on any zombies that happened to get in her way. _I'm doing them all a favor,_ she thought. _They're no different than ghouls. None of them asked for this, none of them deserve it. All I can do is set them free._

She had freed nearly a dozen zombies from their mortal coils before exiting the park down a flight of fancy marble stairs. She rounded the corner and saw that the streets were teeming with undead. The mass of hungry, blank faces came shambling towards as one cohesive unit, threatening to overwhelm and flank her.

There was an alley to her left that she headed towards. Casting one last glance at the sea of undead, she saw something that made her stop. HOSPITAL in large red letters was printed over great square and sterile looking building. There were lights on in the windows, indicating that the hospitals backup generators were functioning.

"A hospital," Seras shouted, happy to voice the obvious. "Out of my way!"

She ran headlong into the mass of rotting cannibals swinging her pipe with all of her strength at any head she saw, crushing them easily. She had felled a good number of them when she felt the red haze begin to overtake her.

_This is bad,_ she thought. The last two times she had gone on zombie slaughtering sprees, someone had to stop her. The first time it was an insane priest with more bayonets than anyone had a right to be carrying, and the other was Sir Integra. The shock of hearing distress in Integra's voice had brought her back down to the real world, out of the world of blood and death she had been sent to.

The next time she had a cogent thought was when she was standing in front of the hospital's automatic doors. They didn't open for her, having been shut down by some wise person who didn't want the entire lobby infested with zombies.

She forced the door open with her fingers and entered, shutting them behind her. A few zombies bumped against the thick glass, but only a few. The rest, possibly a hundred or so, were lying dead in the street. "Good lord," Seras whispered, not remembering a thing. "When the bloody hell did that all happen?" _More importantly, _ she thought, _how long did it take?_

With the feeling that she was completely wasting her time, she began her search for a first aid kit. It stopped abruptly when she saw someone standing on the other side of the lobby. He was Hispanic with wavy brown hair; his green flak with Umbrella logo marked him as an Umbrella operative, along with his M16 assault rifle. His eyes were wide and some color has left his face.

"Who…err, what are you, lady?" he asked with a slight accent. "You went loco out there!"

Seras snarled, stopping short of baring her fangs. She didn't care if he figured out she was a vampire; he wasn't going to live long enough to talk about it. "Umbrella," she said, walking towards him. He raised his gun, but she didn't care. _Let him shoot,_ she thought. _I'll eat him, heal, and have his memories._ _Then I'll be able to get rid of the rest of them without too much trouble. I'll also know when that helicopter is supposed to get here._

"Hey, lady, relax. What's your beef with Umbrella? We're here to save you."

"Liar!" she shrieked. "You bastards planned this. All for some stupid science experiment…for profit! No one is supposed to survive, I know all about it. I'm also going to make sure everything goes according to your plan."

Surprisingly, the man lowered his gun and held up a hand. "Whoa, I wasn't told about no plan like that," he said. "I'm just a mercenary sent her to rescue civilians."

"Well you stink at it," Seras said, preparing to make the final charge and tear out his throat.

The man's face fell, making Seras halt. "Yeah, you got that right," he said. Seras scanned his face, her vampire senses coupled with her police training scanning for the lie. She found none and trusted her instincts.

"I believe you," she said coldly. "But you're wrong. I don't know what you've been told, but you're not here to save civilians. I'm betting not everything has been going has planned? Have you been suffering some bad communication? Does it seem like the other squads are following different plans than the ones you all went over?"

The mercenary nodded gravely. "Yeah, I had noticed that actually. Even our commanders seemed to be following different orders."

"What's your name?" Seras asked.

"Carlos. You?"

"Call me Seras and don't ask me who I work for. I'm one of the good guys and that's all you need to know." Seras scanned his face for his reaction. He didn't trust her, that was plain on his face. He was also checking her out.

"Okay, lady," Carlos said. "We need to get the hell out of here. The army types aren't going to let this sit for much longer, and if what you say is true, our helicopter ride won't wait."

"So there is a helicopter coming? To the clock tower, right?"

"Right. We've got a little under three hours before it arrives. At least that was the plan. With the way stuff is now…"

"It was a slim chance to begin with," Seras said. "Look, I've got a little girl hidden in the park with a wounded leg. I came here for some bandages. Help me find them and lets leave."

Carlos nodded. "She, uh, wasn't bitten was she?"

Seras glared at him. "It doesn't matter. She was alive when I left her and I told her I'd come back with bandages and that's what I'm going to do."

"Okay, okay, don't bite my head off," Carlos said. "There's a nurse's station through here. Let's just go."

With enough bandages and wound dressing paraphernalia to reattach a severed limb, Seras and Carlos ran back towards the park. Seras slowed her pace to match that of Carlos. _Another human to look after,_ she thought, thinking of Jill. _Maybe I can hang onto this one._

**To be continued… **


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter Twenty.**

They made their way through the park at a brisk jog. Seras could have gone faster, but she didn't want to completely outdistance Carlos. _I wonder what happened to Jill?_ she thought as the caretaker's shack she had left Sheri in came into view. The thought of what she was likely about to be forced to do crowded out all others.

"She's inside," Seras said, stopping. "Her leg was bitten by an infected dog a little while ago."

Carlos frowned with one side of his mouth, showing sympathy but not too much. "She's probably turned," he said quietly, sounding like a doctor telling a family their daughter didn't make it. "You know what you're gonna have to do when you go in there, right?"

She gave a heavy sigh, knowing. With the overstuffed first aid kit in one hand and a loaded Beretta in the other, Seras made her way around to the front with Carlos following behind. She went through the front door, hoping that Sheri had come through the fireplace and would lunge at her immediately. Being attacked by the girl would make killing her easier.

"She's through here," Seras said when the main room proved clear. She went to the fireplace and kicked the bricks down. Kneeling to take a peek inside, Seras saw Sheri's still form lying on the cot. _Not quite a zombie yet,_ she thought, stepping through the fireplace.

Carlos had a tiny flashlight that he flicked on as he followed her into the room; she lit an oil lamp sitting on a table inside, pretending she needed it to see. "Sheri, I'm back," Seras said. "I've got bandages…"

Sheri shuddered violently on the cot and turned her head to face Seras. She had gone from bad to worse in the time Seras had been gone; her color had drained from her face, becoming a pale white going on purple. Seras thought she could see a shiver of recognition in her dead, staring eyes, but soon passed and was eclipsed by blank hunger.

Carlos raised his weapon; Seras could feel him tense up behind her in case he ended up being the one who had to do the deed. Slowly, Sheri shifted off the cot, clumsy but as rigid as some of the less recently deceased.

Dropping the bandages, Seras raised her Beretta and fired one bullet into Sheri's forehead, creating a tiny red dot above the girl's eyes and a wide splatter behind her onto the cot. She flopped back onto the cot, dead for the last time.

Neither of them said anything and Seras felt hot bloody tears well up in her eyes. She covered her face with her hands and sat down on the floor, keeping Carlos from seeing her red tears.

She allowed herself only a few minutes to sob into her palms. Carlos was about to begin consoling her when she managed a weak "Let's go." Using the bandages to clean her face and the darkness to keep Carlos from asking questions, Seras stood up and used the back door to exit the shack.

"Any relation?" Carlos asked, once they were free of the room's somber aura.

"She was the daughter of Umbrella scientists. I found her hiding in the police station."

Carlos nodded and looked into the trees towards the burning, wailing city. "We need to book it if we're going to make it to the clock tower," Carlos said.

"Do you know the way?"

Carlos bit his lip and thought. "Yeah, I had to memorize the route from different locations around the city. This park we're in was one of them."

"Lead the way," she said, following him as he broke into a run down the dirt path Seras had traveled over twice now.

Seras had lost more than one person she cared about over the course of her career. _I didn't even really like that girl,_ she thought as she kept an eye on either side of the path, screening for ambushes. It wasn't true though. Granted, Sheri had been a hassle, but that was a natural reaction to seeing your mother split open my mutants and then watching her blood drank by someone you thought was your friend but was actually a vampire.

_I guess I just let her down…_Seras thought. _All I can do now is see this Carlos bloke out of here and make sure I'm right behind Alucard when he destroys Umbrella._

Seras and Carlos were crouched in an alleyway and peering around the corner as flames from a tram car sent thick, black smoke high into the air, obscuring the face of the giant clock imbedded into the tower at the center of town.

"How did that happen?" Seras asked. It looked as though the tram had derailed somehow and crashed through the wall surrounding the clock tower's courtyard.

"No idea," Carlos said. "It's our ticket in though. Look at that gap on the left hand side. We can squeeze through it without getting burned I think."

The area around the clock tower was teeming with zombies. Luckily, they weren't packed in tight, trying to mob the clock tower. Burnt corpses were scattered around the ruined tram and a few of the animate zombies had taken to eating them.

"Alright, I'll take point, you follow," Seras said, running towards the gap between the burning tram and the ruined wall. If there were any surprises beyond the wall, she would be the most likely to survive them.

The zombies saw them running and began to converge immediately. Seras hoped that they would be able to get inside the tower without trouble, not wanting to fight another crowed of undead.

They made it to the gap before the zombies headed them off. With her shotgun ready in both hands, she ducked through the opening and was in the courtyard feeling the heat from the burning wreckage.

All that stood between them and the front door was a brick walkway edged by hedges. Seras could see a door off in the left hand corner that looked to be the entrance to a tool shed or another wing of the building.

No sooner had she taken a step forward did Jill Valentine come bursting out the smaller door with her head twisted back looking behind her. Jill spotted Seras and Carlos and stopped, momentarily confused.

"Jill!" Seras shouted. "The door!" The zombies at their back were a real threat in Seras' mind and she wanted inside as fast as possible. She hadn't forgotten about Nikolai and the trap he had likely set, but didn't have time to worry about it.

The door broke off with a snap and went flying past Jill, courtesy of the creature that had been chasing Jill back at the factory. Its leather coveralls had been badly ripped and damaged, leaving its chest exposed and writhing with purple tentacles.

"What the hell is that thing?" Carlos shouted, slamming a zombie in the face with the butt of his rifle as it staggered up behind him.

"I don't know, but I'm going to kill it. You get inside along with Jill over there," Seras said, running towards the monster before Carlos could argue. She had to hope the humans would enter the building and leave her to deal with the creature, as the courtyard would soon be filled with zombies. _Not to mention whatever that Nikolai person has set up inside._

**To be continued… **


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter Twenty-two.**

Seras thanked God when Jill and Carlos ran through the main door and into the clock tower. Two rapid shots from her Beretta to the creature's face distracted it long enough for them to make it through.

For a moment it looked as if the thing would treat Seras as a bothersome fly and continue after the two humans. She was about to shoot it again when it stopped dead in its tracks and slowly swiveled its grey, bald head around to look at her with one milky malevolent eye.

It grumbled something through its lipless mouth and started lumbering towards her. Its stride held no fear or anger, but a kind of murderous determination and patience. _I'm not so sure I want this anymore,_ Seras thought, some of her old timidity creeping back into her mind.

She shoved the Beretta into her belt, swung the shotgun off her shoulder and flicked off the safety. The weapon held twelve rounds and she intended to put all of them into the thing's face from less than a yard away. "Alright you bloody git, lets get it over with," she said, running towards the monster.

Her unexpected charge failed to impress or disrupt its plan of attack. As Seras got closer, it raised a giant fist above its head and swung downward at an angle. Seras' vampiric reflexes saved her from being plowed into the ground; she skidded to a stop in time to feel the wind on the swing and fired a round of shot into the thing's face.

Blood and meat flew off the creature's head, leaving a bloody porridge of grey skin, blood and fat. Lots of fat, Seras happened to notice after firing again and leaping backward. _The bloody thing's got a damned meat helmet…_she thought, wondering just how she was going to kill the creature.

If its vitals were protected by thick layers of flesh and the creature didn't feel pain or suffer shock, she didn't think her shotgun was going to cut it. She cast a quick glance around for a piece of debris she might possibly be able to shove through the thing's head and instead saw the crowd of zombies filing into the courtyard near the tram.

Distracted momentarily, she didn't notice the monster crouch into a football lineman's stance and charge at a speed defiant of its size. Her head turned just in time to see the thing's gray fingers clamp into her neck and lift her into the air. The shotgun went clattering to the ground as her hands instinctively grabbed the creature's wrist in an effort to free herself. _Thank God I don't need to breath,_ she thought as it began squeezing her throat.

She began trying to pry its fingers away when it became apparent that moving her neck was going to be difficult later if it caused anymore damage. She had the thumb peeled back when one of the purple vein-like structures she had taken for tentacles wrapping around the creature's arm began to uncoil and writhe.

One began snaking up its wrist; she could see that its tip was hard, sharp, and meant to impale her skull. Having something like that shoot through her brain might kill her and it might not, but it was certain to hurt quite a bit as well as incapacitate her long enough for the zombies that had shown up to finish the job.

With her index finger and thumb, she grabbed the creature's wrist and drove her digits into its flesh as hard as she could. Her strength was formidable and as she felt her fingers breach the monster's flesh, she frantically dug around for tendons. Finding them, she began to claw and yank as hard as she could in an effort to tear them. With a satisfying ripping noise, the fingers relaxed their grip on her throat and she dropped to the ground, first landing on her feet and then quickly onto her rear.

She had time for one pained choke before the thing's foot was in the air and coming down to stomp her. Rolling to the right and snagging the shotgun she had dropped, she began firing at the tentacle on its arm. The small appendage was obliterated in two shots, only to be replaced by more on the thing's other arm and back.

The zombies were now threatening to close the distance; their wails and moans were at full volume. Seras began backing towards the crowd of dead people; she fired another shot at the monster to let it know she was still in a fighting mood.

"Come on!" she shouted, aware of the hungry mouths chomping behind her. "Fight me! I won't run like those weak humans!"

_Nothing weak about them,_ she thought, but trash talk was trash talk and whether it worked or not, she couldn't tell. Either way, the monster had decided to try another rush. This time, Seras was ready for it. She leapt forward and low under the monster's extended hand (the good one) and brought her leg around backward in a long, sweeping arc.

The back of her calf connected with the monster's leg just above the foot. Her entire leg burst into a wildfire of pain as the creature tripped and went sailing through the air and into the crowd of zombies.

It crushed a few beneath its weight and the others wasted no time in falling on it, chewing its tough, grey flesh with their rotten, bloody teeth. Seras knew full well all the zombies in the world weren't enough to stop the creature, but her plan to perform follow-up attacks had been waylaid by the pain in her leg.

_God, don't tell me my leg's been broken,_ she thought, grimacing. _Concentrate, heal…force the blood to the wound…_Her leg suddenly became warm and numb as the blood began to repair the damage. She couldn't wait for it to finish, the creature was already beginning to stagger to its feet, unmindful of the fifteen or so zombies that had pig-piled onto its back.

The monster had landed roughly ten feet in front of the burning tram, close enough for anyone who happened to be able to feel pain to experience discomfort. Doing her best to hobble forward on her injured leg, Seras began shoving zombies out of her way, some of which had decided she would make a better meal than the downed monster, which had made it to its feet and was in the process of standing upright when Seras dealt it a kick to the back of its knee, knocking it to its knees and causing her leg to sing with pain.

With a quick flick of her elbow, she sent the shotgun clattering towards the clock tower door. Gripping the creature by the seat of its pants and a loose tentacle, she put all of her strength into throwing the massive thing into the side of the tram.

It almost didn't work. Her strength nearly gave out, which would have allowed the monster to recover and resume its assault. Instead, her blood knew what to do, surging through her arms and torso, giving her the added unholy strength she needed.

It thudded hard against the side of the tram, knocking it loose and causing it to collapse, exposing the flaming interior. The black smoke and heat the wall had been holding in burst outward, causing the back of Seras' hair to singe as she turned her face and staggered away, shoving zombies out of her path as she went.

Thankful that she hadn't caught fire or been blistered, she picked up the shotgun after elbowing three zombies to the ground. She looked back to see how her nemesis was faring; there was no movement from beneath the collapses tram siding aside from the zombies that were blistering and catching fire as they dug around for a meal.

It wasn't dead, but that didn't matter. Her leg was already feeling better and she used it to make her way to the front door. It opened easily and she shut it hard behind her, glad to be out of the courtyard.

Resisting the urge to dramatically slump down in front of the door, she surveyed the room. It was a lavishly decorated receiving area with a hidden hallway to her right and a staircase at the front. Off on the left was another door, decorated with a corpse lying in front. For a moment she thought it was Carlos, but the white skin showed that it was simply another UBCS mercenary.

With no idea where Jill and Carlos had gone, or if this Nikolai person had killed them or not, she reloaded her shotgun and Beretta. If a helicopter was coming, it couldn't land in the courtyard. The only way to get anyone out of the building would be with a rope ladder from the top of the tower.

_If it comes at all,_ she thought, not wanting to be inside Raccoon City for another second, but thinking that might just be the case.

With a tired sigh, Seras headed towards the stairs.

**To be continued…**


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter Twenty-two.**

Two dead spiders, both the size of dogs, told her that someone had been through the clock tower and attempted to secure it. Packages of dynamite had been fixed to the wall and set to explode when shot. Most had been detonated, causing only slight damage to the wall. _Shaped charges…set by professionals_, she thought.

Keeping a careful eye out for any kind of trigger mechanism she might trip, she walked past an unexploded dynamite box and through a door that led out onto a balcony overlooking the side of the tower opposite the courtyard. She looked down onto another open area, this one undisturbed by zombies and rampaging mutants. Although it was smaller than the front yard, a skilled pilot could easily land a helicopter within it.

"Now all we need is a helicopter," she said, walking around the balcony and finding a retractable service ladder leading up to the clock's interior. She could now barely see the front courtyard; it was teeming with zombies now, attracted from outside by the commotion within. She could see the glow from the tram fire as it cast shadows over the yard, but not the source of the fire itself.

She decided to play it safe and assume the monster was up on its feet and chasing after her, or Jill. Who it was after at this point didn't matter. She shouldered her shotgun and drew her Beretta, keeping it in her hand as she went up the steel rungs of the ladder.

When she reached the top, she was pleasantly surprised to find Jill's gun in her face. Both Jill and Carlos were crouched low at either side of the small doorway which led into the clock room. Lowering her gun, Jill held her finger to her lips. Seras looked puzzled and mouthed "What is it?"

Jill jerked a thumb towards a massive gear in the center of the room. A wooden pathway led around its side and presumably all the way around the back. "Nikolai," Jill said quietly.

"I heard someone come up the ladder," said a familiar Russian-accented voice from behind the still cog. "Now there are three of you to kill."

Seras dropped down the ladder when she saw the top of Nikolai's white hair and his gun appear from above the cog. Three bullets whizzed above her head and out into the early morning air. Carlos raised his assault weapon to fire back, but Nikolai ducked before he could.

"It's like this," Carlos said. The clock is missing a cog. We gotta stick it in over there and make the clock chime to call the chopper to this spot. It won't come on its own like I thought. Trouble is, Nikolai has the cog and won't call the thing until we're all worm food."

Seras looked at both of their dire faces and sighed. Getting the cog from Nikolai was actually the least of her concerns. Doing it without revealing that she was a vampire was the challenge. She was also rather anxious about the chopper itself. If the pilots were in on the whole deal, they would simply fly off when the right people didn't come out to be rescued.

_I can't control that,_ she thought. _Best to worry about what I can control than what I can't. Get the cog without them knowing you're a monster…_ "Nikolai!" she shouted. "You know about the monster that's been following Jill, right?"

"It will hunt her down along with all other members of S.T.A.R.S until none remain. Your problem, not mine," Nikolai shouted back. "As a matter of fact, it's what I'm waiting for. Once it kills her, and likely the two of you for getting in its way, I will simply leave."

Seras licked her lips. "Good thinking," she said. "Only one problem with that."

Puzzled looks crossed Carlos and Jill's faces and an annoyed "What the hell are you talking about," came from Nikolai from behind the cog.

"I think I might have broken it," Seras said, keeping her voice even. "It started grumbling something other than stars, and came right after me, even when I tried to run off. I think it's out for everyone now."

Seras shrugged her shoulders at her two companions and mouthed "Maybe he'll believe…"

"Maybe, maybe not," Nikolai said, not sounding certain. "What would you know about it anyway? I'll take my chances and let it kill you."

A professional mercenary, not easily spooked; Seras decided she should have known. There was only one way to approach where Nikolai was hiding, making a flanking maneuver impossible. Seras thought of the dynamite downstairs, but decided that she would be likely to ruin the clock as well as kill Nikolai. Waiting for the creature to appear and cause confusion also posed the same risk.

_I'm just going to have to bare my fangs and get him,_ she thought as a familiar pang began to tickle her stomach and cause her teeth to ache. _Oh God, I'm hungry for blood again…I could fudge not being shot, but when I start to eat the bloody git, they'll know I'm not human._

Maybe she could control the hunger and not eat Nikolai, but the wounds he would be likely to deal her would need healing and she would have to eat soon anyway. She didn't want it to be the pilot or her two new friends.

"You two get down this ladder," she said, climbing up and lying flat on the ground. "If that thing does show up, we can't have it wrecking the clock. With just me here, he might try something and that's when I'll get him. He's bluffing, he can't afford to wait around anymore than we can."

Carlos and Jill both exchanged glances. "No," Jill said. "It's too dangerous."

Seras put a few feet between her and them and drew both of her weapons. Neither Carlos or Jill reacted when she pointed them both at their midsections. "Get down, now. I'm not asking anymore."

"You're not going to shoot us," Carlos said, not buying Seras' bluff.

Seras smiled her best evil smile. "Maybe I'm not completely on your side," she said. "Maybe I've got my own agenda that also requires no survivors."

Logically, her bluff made no sense, but Jill and Carlos both decided to go along with her plan all the same. "Be careful," Jill said, descending the ladder.

"You're crazy," Carlos said with a tiny smile as he followed Jill.

When she felt certain that they were planning on staying down on the balcony, Seras steeled herself for what she was about to do and stood up. "He's right, you're insane," Nikolai said as Seras round the corner where he was hiding.

The golden cog in question was resting at his feet along with a metallic briefcase. Nikolai fired two shots into Seras' chest causing her to flinch and bleed. The wounds hurt, and she focused her attention on the pain to distract herself from the disgusting thing she was about to do.

Nikolai fired again, wondering why Seras wasn't dying. She shut her eyes tight, and opened them. Her irises had gone blood red. Opening her mouth wide to reveal rows of pointed teeth forwarded by a pair of vicious fangs, she lunged forward and landed on top of Nikolai who struggled to kick her off.

It was a clumsy pounce, but her strength forced his hands apart and allowed her to grip his head. Twisting it and forcing it back, she bit into his throat, ripping it wide open. Alucard had described to her elegant ways to feed without killing a victim; he had described how to viciously kill while feeding as well. Seras never thought she would use either, much less the latter.

The kill, despite its brutality, was much cleaner than her feast of Annette Birkin. The blood was only coming out of the neck and she wasn't insane with hunger. When Nikolai stopped moving and the blood stopped pouring, Seras was full.

She stood, the man's blood was coursing through her causing flashes from his most recent memories to come into her view. Nearly all of them involved the murder of people called "the Directors" who held vital tactical information on the bio-weapons that had been unleashed on Raccoon City's unsuspecting populace. With these people dead, Nikolai would hold all of the info and thus be able to command a much higher price than the one he was already being paid.

She buried the wicked man's thoughts deep in a pit at the bottom of her soul and heaped dirt on them. She would call him up later for information on Umbrella, but having such a filthy thing inside her made her feel as though she had been raped and contaminated, even though it was more like the other way around. _I wonder if Alucard has any tricks for keeping these people locked away…or getting them out. _

She fitted the cog into the spot where it belonged and pushed the large red button beneath it. The gears began to rotate and while the bell was making the room unbearable, Seras used the back of Nikolai's vest to wipe the blood from her face. She decided to simply put the thing on; it could cover the bullet holes in her uniform and might just convince the chopper pilot she was with Umbrella.

She left the clock room quickly and didn't see Jill and Carlos at first when she reached the bottom. Both were around the corner with their guns pointed at her, her bluff having worked at least a little bit. "Nice shirt. Who's side are you on?" Jill asked, sternly.

Seras let both her weapons fall to the floor and put her hands up. "Yours," she said, softly.

"I thought so," Carlos said, smiling. Jill lowered her weapon and seemed convinced as well. "You were a little to upset about that girl dying to be a spy or whatever."

Seras cringed as Jill's face fell. "She didn't make it then…" Jill said.

Seras shook her head. "No, I messed up."

They were silent for a moment and then heard the beat of helicopter blades. "Must be it was parked on a roof nearby," Carlos said as the chopper came closer. "I've got a flare. I'll signal it."

Carlos went to the other side of the balcony, struck a landing flare, and hurled it to the clear courtyard as it billowed red smoke. "Let's get down there, fast," he said, running through the door with Seras and Jill following.

**To be continued…**


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter Twenty-three.**

Seras' body went on full alert as she headed down the stairs, now in front of the group. The main door had been knocked down and sent across the room into a support pillar. About a dozen zombies had made their way into the room, possibly following whatever had come through the first time.

"It's here," Seras said, looking around and not seeing the monster.

"Forget it and let's go," Carlos shouted, dashing out ahead and making for the door with the dead mercenary in front of it.

Jill seemed nervous as well and let Seras go in front. Expecting ambush at any moment, they went through the door and into a wide room with a piano in the corner. Two tables complete with chairs had been set up next to the back wall which was lined with large windows looking out into the courtyard in which the helicopter would land.

"Through there," Carlos said, wasting no time throwing a chair through the window, shattering it. The wind from the chopper was disrupting the smoke from the flare and for a brief moment as she stepped out onto the grass with Jill and Carlos running in front of her, Seras felt as thought the ordeal were nearing its end.

A crashing sound behind her made her turn her head. Where the creature had come from, she couldn't be sure, from behind them or the door in front. Its skin had been blackened by the flames, but it still possessed the same amount of physical integrity as before.

The chopper touched down and allowed Jill and Carlos to board. Who else was on the chopper and what their prerogatives were would have to wait as Seras fired a round from her Beretta towards the creature's eye.

The bullet found its target, but didn't slow down the monster or cause it to stumble around blindly. She wondered if it could somehow see through its eye patch and then decided she didn't care; it was time to leave.

Seras boarded the chopper just as it lifted up off the ground, both Carlos and Jill grabbing her arms and pulling her in. As the chopper gained altitude, Seras turned when Carlos and Jill began shouting.

The creature charged the helicopter and leapt to grab onto the landing rung. The thing's weight caused the chopper to tilt and drift towards the clock tower. For a moment, Seras feared they would crash rotor-first into the side of the building, but the pilot turned the helicopter just in time while flying backward and away from the wall.

_Great pilot,_ Seras thought, removing her shotgun from her shoulder while Jill and Carlos kept her from falling. "Fly up!" she shouted at the top of her lungs as she shot the monster in the face for what felt like the hundredth time that evening. It had no effect, save to make the creature grab the rung with two hands and begin to pull itself up.

The pilot shouted something about too much weight and wondering what the hell the thing was, as the chopper slowly and unsteadily began to climb. With her free hand, Jill fired down on the creature as well, sending chunks of meat flying off it, but not making it let go.

Seras noticed that the hand she had damaged wasn't gripping as well as the other one. Thinking she would have to try and pry its fingers loose while it climbed into the helicopter and caused them all to crash, she noticed the knife sheathed in Jill's boot. Yanking it out of the sheath, she shifted her position so that she was lying with her torso extended over the edge of the chopper floor. "Grab her feet!" Carlos shouted, letting his rifle fall to the floor. Jill grabbed Seras' leg as she extended herself over the edge towards the monster as its chest cleared the bar it was holding.

She dealt it a hard punch with the knife's hilt, knocking it backward. She slid forward more, now totally dependant on the grip of Jill and Carlos to keep her from falling, and began slashing at the monster's fingers. The knife was sharp and it cut deep, severing the tendons she wanted cut on the creature's good hand. When it let go, she began cutting the other.

Before the monster fell, it dealt her an open-handed slap to the back, one that would have ended with the thing grabbing onto her and dragging her off had its fingers worked properly. The blow knocked the wind out of her and likely fractured a vertebrae or three, making her drop the knife.

The knife and the creature both fell twenty feet to the ground, allowing the chopper to rapidly gain altitude. For a second Seras felt suspended above the entire city with nothing keeping her aloft but the aid of her two human companions.

A large hand grabbed her by the butt and hauled her up by the cloth. Sitting safely in the chopper she looked at a grinning Carlos. "Thanks," he said. "I thought we were goners."

_Don't slap him, he's had a rough night. All of us have,_ she thought. "We made it," Seras said. "Finally."

Jill nodded and looked out over the dead city. "I used to think they brought this all on themselves," she said. "After what we told them they still trusted Umbrella, but they didn't deserve this."

Carlos' face had become grim. "I was stupid to trust them too. I've got a lot to answer for."

The farther they flew from the city, the more of the devastation they could see. The death toll would easily be in the hundreds of thousands. Raccoon City wasn't big, but it was still a city. _An entire city…murdered,_ Seras thought. "What now? We can't go where that pilot is going to take us," Seras said.

Carlos picked up his rifle. "Let me handle that."

Jill knew of an abandoned house a mile or so off the highway. Carlos told the pilot to put them down on a spot roughly two miles from the place without telling him that was where they were headed. They also left him hogtied on the floor of the chopper, thus buying them the time they would need.

They reached the house just as the sun was coming up over the horizon, having made the trip from the chopper to the place at a jog. It was clearly dilapidated and unfit for human habitation, but they wasted no time in falling asleep after doing their best to secure the entrances.

Seras found a spot behind the couch where she figured she would be out of the sun. As full of blood as she was, the sunlight wouldn't kill her, but it might be quite unpleasant. Thankfully, Carlos and Jill were too tired to ask about her odd sleeping arrangement.

They all woke up late in the day, sparing Seras a long sunbath. Jill was the cleanest among them and the least apt to be questioned or noticed if she went into a nearby town. Jill came back later that evening with a rental SUV.

While driving back, Seras opted to divulge some information. "You know how I'm with the British government, right?" she said, riding in the back while Jill drove and Carlos rode shotgun.

"I remember," Jill said.

"Well, the plan B for my extraction is for me to find a hotel, make a long distance call and then wait for a week. After that I'm off to England to make my report."

"Yeah, so? You want us to drop you off?" Carlos asked.

"Well, I'd like it if you came with me," Seras said. "I know you really shouldn't trust me, but…who else are you going to go to?"

Jill's fingers drummed the steering wheel. "Chris, another S.T.A.R.S member, went to Europe to do some digging on Umbrella," Jill said. "I don't think our government was involved in this, but I can't be sure…"

"Sure, why not?" Carlos said. "If anyone in the States catches me, I'll be thrown in jail for the rest of my life, and if Umbrella gets its claws in me, I'm dead."

It was decided that they would go with Seras back to England. An arrangement that worked well for Seras, seeing as how she had lost all of her money and identification papers somewhere in Raccoon City.

Once the calls were made and Seras had convinced Integra that Jill and Carlos were both on the level, they waited for a week in a small hotel in a sleepy little town. Their weapons they kept out of sight and remained vigilant for anyone from the cops, the FBI, or Umbrella.

Seras took the night shift, and slept under a pile of blankets for most of the day while Carlos and Jill watched television and played cards. The media reported that a nuclear reactor had exploded in Raccoon City, leveling the town. Efforts to keep radiation from blowing east were successful.

"That lie won't hold for long," Carlos said. "There's way too many holes."

Jill nodded in agreement while a groggy-eyed Seras watched the TV screen. "The conspiracy theories are going to fly, that's for sure."

One evening, a little less than a week after Seras spoke with Integra, a black sedan pulled into the lot. All three had their guns drawn when Seras risked a peek through the spy hole in the door. Walter Dornez's face was smiling politely as if knowing he was being looked at by someone very happy to see him.

**One more chapter and we're done…**


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter Twenty-four:**

**Epilogue. **

When the order came to wipe out every living thing inside Umbrella headquarters, Seras felt happy. After going over a layout of the building along with Alucard and Walter, it was decided that she had earned the right to go into the board room and blow everyone there away.

"They're only human you know," Alucard said. "Or have you gotten over that little hang-up of yours?" Her former master had been impressed by her deeds in Raccoon City and had remarked that she had come into her own quite nicely.

"After seeing what they've done, human isn't a word I'd use on them," she said bitterly, thinking of Sheri Birkin's last moments on earth.

"I'll make my way down into the bowels of the building and cause a panic. That should cause the place to evacuate and then perform a lockdown procedure. You will already be inside and headed up to the top floor. Nothing they have should be able to stop you, not the way you are now."

Alucard had taught her several vampiric tricks, ones that she could now perform as a full fledged vampire. "And while Miss Victoria is cutting off the head, I shall be outside ensuring that no one of importance escapes, as well as securing our own escape route," Walter said. His normal butler outfit had been exchanged for a pinstriped evening suit.

From the remarks Alucard and Walter had made on the drive over to the Umbrella building, Seras suspected they had done something not unlike this years before her time. "Too old to leap from a plane now I'm afraid," Walter had said.

"At least you weren't in a box," Alucard said, smiling.

She would have to ask later. Her current cover was that of someone sent to show a new business model created by an upcoming and false consulting firm. Her long case concealed her Harkonnen cannon plus a small automatic pistol.

Dressed in a black business suite with a painfully short skirt, all eyes in the board room were on her and not her abnormal briefcase. Getting in had been easy; apparently none of the old men in the room expected assassination attempts or took the idea seriously.

Seras had actually brought along some equipment for a presentation; it was in a smaller briefcase she carried in her other hand. She took a moment to set up the projector along with the laptop containing the PowerPoint presentation she had hastily created.

Feeling their lecherous eyes on her, she got the projector up and running. An picture of Sheri Birkin, taken for school, appeared. "This is a little girl named Sheri Birkin," Seras started off by saying, pleased at the dark looks of recognition made by some upon hearing the name Berkin. "She's dead now." Seras opened the case and pulled the automatic out from next to the cannon. "Dead because you blokes are worse than the monsters you create."

Looks of befuddlement turned to fear when she drew her weapon and fired. Her strength kept the muzzle from jumping out of control while they all rushed out of their seats and towards the door. None of them made it.

With everyone in the room dead, she set up her cannon and awaited the security team. When she heard them arrive, she sent an armor piercing round through the door, killing or wounding everyone on the other side.

With her work essentially done, she left the board room with her Harkonnen and machine gun, purposely forgetting the lap top with Sheri's picture on it, along with a detailed list of Umbrella's crimes.

On the way down the stairs, she met two more security sweep teams. Both were obliterated by her cannon, none of them expecting to run into that level of firepower. When she reached the bottom, she met Alucard in the lobby. "Did you finish them?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, not stopping.

"And did it feel good?" Alucard said, getting up from a bench and following her out the door where Walter stood next to a car in the parking lot while others lay in pieces or on fire around him.

"It felt right," Seras said. "They were bad people who needed killing. Stop trying to make me question myself."

"Fair enough," Alucard said. "Careful you don't lose yourself is all I'm saying."

"I won't," she said, throwing open the back door and putting her cannon inside while Walter and Alucard both got in.

"One less threat to Britain," Walter said. "Maybe things will slow down a bit now."

"Not likely," Alucard said. "The technology for this sort of thing is out there. With the way information gets around in this day and age, I have a feeling the fun is just starting."

_Fun he says,_ Seras thought. _As though it were all some sort of stupid video game._

**The end. **


End file.
